News brief

“Encounters in the Milky Way,” which opens today at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, made waves months before its premiere. As scientists were fine-tuning the show, they noticed a spiral in the Oort Cloud, a giant shell of icy material surrounding the sun. Made of billions of comets, the formation was previously unknown to astronomers. Planetary scientist André Izidoro told AP it amounted to a “striking shift in our understanding of the outer solar system.” – Staff