I remember reading something about a disturbance in the Oort Cloud when the solar system goes thru it's galactic orbit. Somehow we oscillate like a merry-go round. This is supposed to "knock " stuff in the Oort cloud around and maybe send it in towards Earth. I believe the article said that every 65,000 years or so the galactic tides are strong enough to send bigger and more comets into the inner solar system. It was suggested that this is why Earth has suffered several global extinctions. I thought this was pretty interesting.

I know there is a mission to go check out Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. I wonder if either of the Voyager crafts will be close to the Oort Cloud any time soon. I know they are headed out into space. Will the crafts be able to send back any info about the Oort Cloud? Is there really an Oort Cloud? How far out is it? Is it farther out than the heliopause? There is a lot of speculation. Could the Hubble or any of the new arrays maybe "see" something like the Oort Cloud?

__________________
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein