Oumuamua is the first object human beings have ever seen in our solar system that is known to have originated outside of it.
Does this mean all the comets we see/track, all of them originated in the Solar system? I would have imagined at least few comets would have originated outside our solar system.
They're supposed to originate in the Oort cloud. And our star system currently seems to be the only one with an Oort cloud, which seems singularly unlikely. I imagine once we figure out why we can't see any other star's cloud, we'll relax the assertion that all comets are solar-local
Long-period comets are thought to originate in the Oort cloud, short-period comets in the scattered disc or the Kuiper belt, and main-belt comets in the asteroid belt.
They're supposed to originate in the Oort cloud.
AFAIK, our Oort cloud hasn't been observed, only hypothesized from the behavior of long-period comets.
Given that, it's kind of unsurprising we wouldn't have concrete evidence of extra-solar Oort clouds.
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Does this mean all the comets we see/track, all of them originated in the Solar system? I would have imagined at least few comets would have originated outside our solar system.
It means that none of them individually are known to have originated outside, yes.
They're supposed to originate in the Oort cloud. And our star system currently seems to be the only one with an Oort cloud, which seems singularly unlikely. I imagine once we figure out why we can't see any other star's cloud, we'll relax the assertion that all comets are solar-local
Long-period comets are thought to originate in the Oort cloud, short-period comets in the scattered disc or the Kuiper belt, and main-belt comets in the asteroid belt.
AFAIK, our Oort cloud hasn't been observed, only hypothesized from the behavior of long-period comets.
Given that, it's kind of unsurprising we wouldn't have concrete evidence of extra-solar Oort clouds.
I wonder if we could see comets transiting other stars, and make the same kind of inferences...