Where are the ancient, icy remnants of solar system formation stored in frozen reservoirs?
Answer
Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud
The material composing comets originates from the earliest epoch of the solar system, about 4.6 billion years ago. These materials remained largely undisturbed and frozen in vast, distant reservoirs located beyond the main planetary region. These primordial building blocks are chiefly sequestered in two major areas: the Kuiper Belt, which lies beyond the orbit of Neptune, and the Oort Cloud, which resides much farther out in the extreme fringes of the solar system. It is the highly elliptical orbits of these objects that eventually fling them inward toward the Sun, triggering their visible activity.
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