Interstellar Objects Outnumber Solar System Objects in the Oort Cloud

Here, we show that the detection of Borisov implies that interstellar objects outnumber Solar system objects in the Oort cloud, whereas the reverse is true near the Sun due to the stronger gravitational focusing of bound objects.
This hypothesis can be tested with stellar occultation surveys of the Oort cloud. Furthermore, we demonstrate that ?1% of carbon and oxygen in the Milky Way Galaxy may be locked in interstellar objects, saturating the heavy element budget of the minimum mass Solar nebula model.

Amir Siraj, Abraham Loeb
Comments: 4 pages, 4 figures; submitted for publication
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA)
Cite as: arXiv:2011.14900 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2011.14900v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Amir Siraj
[v1] Mon, 30 Nov 2020 15:34:41 UTC (101 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.14900