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Comets, Asteroids, And Dwarf Planets! Most of the solar system is empty space; however, less than 0.0001 percent consists of the Sun, eight planets and their moons. Also, very small part of this percent belongs to vast and unexplored region of our solar system. This video represents a less known area of our solar system. It is a video about the Oort Cloud, the Kuiper Belt, and the Asteroid belt. Astronomers believe that these regions of our solar system are homes to all dwarf planets, comets and asteroids. After the Sun, planets, and moons were formed out of the disc of dust and gas, it is believed that material left over ended up in the regions of Kuiper belt and Oort cloud. In these vast and unexplored areas of the solar system may be more than two trillions of icy objects, some of which could be the size of the Earth or bigger. The Oort cloud is the most distant region of the solar system at a distance between 5,000 and 100,000 astronomical units from the Sun. It has never been observed, but is thought to be a massive spherical cloud of icy objects. Astronomers think that most of the comets originate in the Oort cloud, in particular long-period comets. Their orbital period around the Sun is more than 200 years, some up to 1 million years. The Kuiper belt is the region behind the orbit of Neptune at a distance between 30 and 55 astronomical units from the Sun. It's home to Pluto, Eris, and several other recently discovered dwarf planets. This vast and unexplored area of our solar system may have more than 200 dwarf planets. The short-period comets with orbital period of less than 200 years, originate in the region of the Kuiper belt. Asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter where the greatest number of asteroids can be found, is debris left over by the planet that failed to form because of the close interaction with Jupiter. There are evidence of volcanic activities, presence of water, and thin atmosphere in some of these objects. Yet Jupiter's strong gravitational pull prevented formation of planet, and possible life. Ceres, the only dwarf planet in the belt is nearly 600 mi in diameter, while a few asteroids are more than 250 mi. Asteroids orbit the Sun in nearly circular paths, but with close interaction with jupiter or coalition with other asteroid, it can be pushed out from their orbit. The accretion process continue until today even after formation of our solar system. The planet Earth is still growing but in much slower rate than in past. Small bits of rock and metal constantly hit the surface of the Earth or fall into Earth's atmosphere. In friction with the air these rocks became dust, and eventually ends up on the ground, adding about 50,000 tons of new material per year to Earth mass. Once every few million years, asteroid large enough threatens to extinct life on Earth. 65 million years ago nearly 80 percent of the species on Earth vanished from the impact with "Dinosaur Killer" asteroid. http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=KBOs http://www.universetoday.com/32522/oort-cloud/ http://www.space.com/16401-oort-cloud-the-outer-solar-system-s-icy-shell.html http://lcogt.net/spacebook/comets-kuiper-belt-and-oort-cloud http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/solar-system/asteroids-comets-article/ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch/asteroids-comets.cfm http://www2.ess.ucla.edu/~jewitt/kb.html