Is it possible that a planet could orbit this way?

Question

Is it possible that a planet could orbit the sun below the rest of the planets? 2nd question is the oort cloud encompassing our solar system, or is it just in one particular spot? 3rd questions Is it possible that there could be another sun (smaller than our sun) orbiting our sun, but it is so far a way that its about the same way apart as the oort cloud? 4th question Do you think that there could be other planets even farther away from the oort cloud orbiting our sun? 5th question. I heard this one time, that there is a sort of field (not sure what type, but had to do with atoms) even farther away(the outskirts of space, have you heard about this?

Answer 1

All these qestions can be answered with one word-maybe. So where do we go with this matter?

Answer 2

Okay, you're really getting good mileage with this question!

1)  No.  Any planet orbiting the sun would have to orbit the sun.  That means that it's orbit could be at an angle to the ecliptic.  As such, all the planets are orbiting at some angle, already going above and below.

2)  It's going all around the solar system.  It's not a very dense 'cloud' to begin with, but like the planets themselves, all these chunks of ice circle at different angles so that this cloud is densest along the ecliptic.

3)  Not likely.  We've figured out a lot about the positions, rotational speeds and masses of all the planets, and another star in this region would affect the orbits of everything in the solar system.  If there was a star that close, even a teeny tiny brown dwarf, we'd have some better signs.

4)  Tough question.  Not likely, but not impossible either.  The Oort cloud is mostly made up of dirty snowballs because all the lighter stuff in the solar system got flung out there.  More massive stuff like planets and asteroids fell in a lot closer.  There are some plutoids out there like Sedna so I wouldn't call it impossible though.

5)er... there is what is known as a 'heliosphere' which is the point where the solar wind no longer pushes away from the solar system, but it's not a field or anything.  Could that be what you mean?

Hope this helps,

Cheers!

Answer 3

1.  Objects can orbit the sun with a more eccentric orbit (i.e. outside the general plane of the solar system), but it would be angular.  The Sun would still be the center.

2.  Think of the Oort cloud as a hazy particle-debris sphere around the outskirts of the solar system.  It's the official boundary for the solar system.  

3.  I think there's a companion star (although I cannot remember which) to ours, but any other star would be several light years away.  But nothing like a proper binary star system the you mean.  

4.  No.  The oort cloud is essentially defined by the fact that it draws the boundary for our solar system.  Could there be a rogue body beyond it?  Possibly, but as it would take a thousand years to orbit the Sun or more, finding such a thing would be hard.  But my gut says that's a trick question, since the solar system ends at the oort cloud.

5.  I'm not sure I follow.  As quite a few things have to do with atoms, you'd have to be more specific.