オールトの雲
Besides the galactic tide, the main trigger for sending comets into the inner Solar System is thought to be interaction between the Sun's Oort cloud and the gravitational fields of nearby stars or giant molecular clouds. The orbit of the Sun through the plane of the Milky Way sometimes brings it in relatively close proximity to other stellar systems. For example, it is hypothesized that 70 thousand years ago, perhaps Scholz's Star passed through the outer Oort cloud (although its low mass and high relative velocity limited its effect). During the next 10 million years the known star with the greatest possibility of perturbing the Oort cloud is Gliese 710. This process could also scatter Oort cloud objects out of the ecliptic plane, potentially also explaining its spherical distribution.