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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 00:14, 12 April 2008.

Oort cloud

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I'm nominating this article for featured article because, although it is short, there is not much left to say about its topic at present. It has been copyedited, its references have been regularised, and Brightorange has run his script. Serendipodous 10:21, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments
Issues resolved, Ealdgyth - Talk 20:49, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Source subbed with journal article. Serendipodous 21:34, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The sources themselves look good (minus a few questions above), they just need some formatting to be consistent. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:19, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the references are correct now. Some are blocked here at work will check them at home.Samuel Sol (talk) 15:47, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Provisional oppose until the prose is fixed by a someone else.

  • First point is easy: the captions that are just nominal groups should not end with a period—the first two are in this category. (MOS)
  • Space after < (MOS)
  • Remove both instances of "situated", which is redundant and ungainly.
  • "believe ... to be" twice in two sentences is laboured.
  • "although some can still have come"—"may"?
  • "Over the course of the age of the Solar System"—No.
  • "for the vast majority of its existence"—"Majority" is odd here; why not "for almost all of its existence"?

And so on ... Tony (talk) 11:22, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Issues resolved, RJH (talk) 15:58, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments—It has decent material but I think it needs a little more polishing up.
    • I would like to see the lead have a sentence or two on the formation of the Oort cloud.
    • The last paragraph of the Hypothesis section needs referencing.
    • There may be some unexplained jargon: "aphelia", "absolute magnitudes", &c.
      • Wikilinked both, you think an explanation is still needed mate?
I added a note about absolute magnitude. I think all the other difficult ideas are explained. Serendipodous 16:03, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • "easily affected by the motions of passing stars or other forces" Is the motion of a star a type of force? Maybe it should say "gravitational interaction"?
Foxed. Oops. I mean Fixed. Serendipodous 16:03, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • 'Solar System' or 'solar system'? Needs to be consistent throughout.
      • I went with 'Solar System', as a matter of consistency, although both are correct
    • The article should explain "1996 PW".
      • I did a small clarification of why it was mentioned, and the following ref (15) deals more with it.
    • The statement that, "The role of Jupiter in protecting the Earth from potentially devastating comet impacts is believed to have played a crucial role in the evolution of life" may not be true. See: http://www.europlanet-eu.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=102&I
Added sentence or two about 2007 findings. Serendipodous 16:10, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Just as the moon[']s tidal force" is missing an apostrophe. Is "eliptic plane" missing an "l" or a "c"?
    • "While on the distant outer regions of these orbits..." Is this "while" intended to be in contrast to something, or does it mean "while" the objects are at their apapsis?
      • Still unclear. It should perhaps say "While these objects are in..." or some such.—RJH (talk)
Fixed. Serendipodous 16:03, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • The "Comets" section is one long paragraph.
      • This would be my mistake when formating references. Broke now.
    • "and thus that the" or "and thus the".
    • "Their orbits are such that they are believed to have initially been long period comets but to have been captured by the gravity of the giant planets..." or "They are believed to be long period comets that were captured by the gravity of the giant planets..."
      • Reworded
    • I believe that "It has been suggested" are weasel words.
      • Changed, see if it is better.
  • Sorry.—RJH (talk) 17:23, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strange, that. I thought it was a spelling mistake, but my spellchecker let it pass. Still, my British spellchecker seems to like "dislodge" just as well, so I changed it. Serendipodous 16:09, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Oppose—I'm withdrawing my support because another look through the article revealed more problems, some of which may be newly introduced since my prior review, fixes and edits.
      • The statement "one thousand times farther inward" sounds illogical to me. Taken literally, that would be 50 million A.U.
      • Per Tony1 below, there is inconsistent use of the hyphen in "short period" and "long period" throughout the article. Also "long period" is never explained.
      • In the sentence that begins "In 1950 the idea", there are two colons. Are both really necessary?
      • "...gone through one or more cycles..." Orbital cycles?
      • "...the outermost extent of the Sun's gravitational pull" is an invalid assertion. The Sun's gravitation pull does not suddenly truncate like that. It should instead somehow indicate that other gravitational fields become dominant beyond that radius.
      • "It can be subdivided..." Does "It" means the edge of the Solar System or the Oort cloud? This is a minor ambiguity, but I think the text should be perfectly clear and not leave the reader wondering.
      • What is the "...inner part of the Solar System" relative to the Oort cloud? 1,000 A.U.? The orbit of Neptune?
        • What is the "inner Solar System", the "outer Solar System" and the "inner regions of the Solar System"? These are used throughout the text, so I think they should be defined.
      • (about 500 billion with absolute magnitudes less than 10.9) By "less than", does this mean numbers smaller than 10.9, or magnitudes fainter than 10.9? I know what you're trying to say, but this ambiguity should be fixed.
      • What is an "unusual eccentric orbit"? Comets already follow eccentric orbits from "every corner of the sky". So why is this unusual?
      • The "Structure and composition" section says the outer Oort cloud is 3 Earth masses. The "Origin" section says the total mass of the Oort cloud is 3 Earth masses. Yet the inner Oort cloud has 10-100 times as many objects. The text contradicts itself; it should be self-consistent.
      • Is the paragraph that begins, "Jupiter's role in protecting Earth from collision..." even relevant to this article? Why is it here?
      • The sentence "Some scholars theorize..." includes two en-dashes rather than em-dashes.
    • Sorry.—RJH (talk) 15:13, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think I've fixed all your issues. Serendipodous 22:07, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
All but one. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 15:20, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've added wikilinks to "inner planet", "outer planet", "inner solar system" and "outer solar system" when they occur. I've also removed one ambiguous "inner" and replaced it with "charted".Serendipodous 15:34, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks.—RJH (talk) 15:58, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Provisional oppose: as both above, I don't think the prose is polished enough. I've tried to do a bit of copy-editing of the first few paragraphs but the whole article would greatly benefit from continued work in that direction. I would also like to see FAC-comments on the scientific content from the relevant WikiProjects. I'm not sufficiently versed in the subject to determine whether or not the article is factually correct and comprehensive. Pichpich (talk) 17:33, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Struck out my provisional oppose. Prose has improved quite a bit but I won't have time to review the article carefully so I won't "support" per se. Pichpich (talk) 17:19, 10 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Provisional oppose: Serendipodous, I am still not satisfied with "about 3 Earth masses". We can't say in one part that the outer cloud's mass is unlikely to be more than a few Earth masses (completely unspecific) and the inner cloud's mass is unknown, and then say later that the mass of the cloud (presumably outer and inner) is about 3 Earth masses. The reader will naturally think, how is it that in one part of the article it can be pinned down to a number, and in another part of the article it's so unknown that not even a reasonable range can be given? And that's another thing -- "about 3" does not make clear the extent of our uncertainty. It could mean between 2.9 and 3.1. It could mean between 1 and 5, as you suggest. If it's the latter, then "about 3" is really misleading -- 1 and 5 are nowhere close to 3. That's a little like a 50-year-old claiming to be "about 30" on a dating web site. Much better would be to give a range in which the actual mass of the Oort cloud is quite likely to lie. I think the article is basically very good, and most criticisms have been fixed. I was excited to see Oort cloud as a featured article candidate, and tried to brush up some of the prose to get it there; I hope it does become a featured article. But I think this problem of the mass of the Oort cloud is... not insignificant. Kier07 (talk) 05:06, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OK. I went through the source and added a number. Now anyone who wants to check the mass against the Earth can do it themselves. Serendipodous 07:14, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think most of the issues above have been addressed. Serendipodous 08:01, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support The articles satisfies FA criteria. I have only one comment. The article in one instance states that the Scattered disk is the source of short period comets (SPC). However in other instances it states that the Kuiper belt is the source of the same comets. I think this issue should be clarified. The Scattered disk is the most probable source—only small number of SPC can come from the Kuiper belt. Ruslik (talk) 08:39, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comets start in the Kuiper belt, shift to the scattered disc, and then fall into the centaur population. Serendipodous 08:45, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. See ref [1] (Morbidelli) section 2.4 p. 22. The Kuiper belt can not be the source of the Scattered Disk population of objects. Ruslik (talk) 08:57, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Then why is the scattered disc called the scattered disc? Where were the objects scattered from? Serendipodous 08:59, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Neptune scattered them into the present orbits 4.5 billion years ago during the planetary migration. Ruslik (talk) 09:04, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Then Kuiper belt probably needs to be rewritten. Serendipodous 09:18, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]


  • More samples:
    • "widely-accepted"—No hyphen after "-ly"; see MOS.
    • "about half of objects that are scattered travel outward towards the Oort cloud, while"—half of THE objects? It's unclear at the moment.
    • "This explains the near spherical shape"—I think "nearLY" is preferable, yes?
    • Don't like this: "On the other hand, the Hills cloud, being bound more strongly to the Sun, hasn't acquired a spherical shape yet." --> "On the other hand, the Hills cloud, which is bound more strongly to the Sun, has yet to acquire a spherical shape." Ouch.
    • "Short period comets"; there's a hyphen elsewhere in an analogous expression.
    • "those with orbits lasting 200 years or less"—hmmm ... why not "those with orbits of up to 200 years"?

What worries me is that these are just what my eyes strayed onto, so there are bound to be glitches everywhere. Someone else should be conscripted to go through it. There are good copy-editors in this field; research edit summaries in edit histories of FAs in the field. Tony (talk) 12:34, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment on RJH's review—Just shoving a "Support" in here and providing no evidence of having looked at the article is regrettable. We really need to engage with the material, or even a portion of it, to make this a high-quality process. The nominators and the project deserve it. Please tell us just a little about why you support it, please.

He did. He had a list of issues which were resolved, so he compressed them into that grey bar. If you want to see his issues, click "show" on the bar.Serendipodous 13:57, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Tony1: look under the hidden gray box. Also see the article history for April 2–3—RJH (talk) 15:13, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment "only two currently known trans-Neptunian objects, 90377 Sedna and 2000 CR105, are considered possible members of the inner Oort cloud" This needs a source, and what about (87269) 2000 OO67, with an aphelion of greater than 1000 AU? -RunningOnBrains 19:07, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OO67 has a very distant aphelion, but a very close perihelion; indeed its perihelion is only 20 AU, which places it near Uranus. Therefore OO67 is not beyond the gravitational reach of Neptune. It is Sedna and CR105's perihelia, rather than their aphelia, that make them potential Oort cloud candidates. Serendipodous 21:28, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Suport I believe this article passes all criteria to become a FA. People seem to have small issues with the prose, but I believe it is good enough for an FA about a scientific topic. Nergaal (talk) 07:59, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've actually read through the whole thing again and the prose has definitely been tightened quite a bit. I can't comment on scientific content but the article's form is quite good. But one thing that should definitely be addressed is the overlinking. Comet is wikilinked waaaay too many times and so are names of planets, solar system, basic words like planet, sun, etc. There are also links of dubious value for context such as links to universities, the link physicist and so on. Nothing really horrible of course, but it should be fixed. 17:35, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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