Question

What is the difference between the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud ?

Answer 1

Hint:The Kuiper Belt is not to be confused with the Oort Cloud, which is a far farther-reaching area of frozen, comet-like bodies that covers the solar system and includes the Kuiper Belt. Comets are believed to come from both the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt.

Complete answer:
Difference between Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud:
The Kuiper belt, or Kuiper cloud, is a disk-shaped area visible outside Saturn's orbit whereas the Oort cloud is a ring of dust and comets that circles the sun. Despite the fact that the Oort cloud is not technically a cloud, it extends three light years from the sun.The Kuiper belt is made up of millions of icy comets that orbit the sun at a high rate, but are not asteroids. The Kuiper belt is disk-shaped, while the Oort cloud is spherical.

When astronomer Gerard Peter Kuiper suggested in $1951$ the presence of a disk-shaped region outside of Neptune's orbit that was a source of short period comets, he was credited with discovering the Kuiper cloud whereas Oort cloud was named after Jan Hendrik Oort, a Dutch astronomer who suggested in $1950$ that comets could have their origins in a cloud of material.The origin of the Kuiper belt is a bit complicated and unclear. The Oort cloud is known to be a residue of the original protoplanetary disk that was formed around the sun about $4.6$ million years ago.

Note:The sun and stars disturb the objects in the Oort cloud, but neither the sun nor the stars disturb the objects in the Kuiper belt.The Oort cloud’s objects are formed closer to the sun than the Kuiper belt objects. The objects in the Kuiper belt as well as the Oort cloud are composed largely of methane, water, and ammonia. The Kuiper belt is also home to three dwarf planets, such as Pluto, methane, and Haumea.