Abstract
Recent work has shown that if short-period comets predominantly occur as a result of planetary “captures” of long-period comets, the relevant source flux of nearly parabolic orbits must involve comets with perihelia in the range 5–30 AU, significantly beyond the region in which the flux is observationally constrained. The numbers and orbital parameters of short-period comets therefore in principle provide strong constraints on those theories of cometary origin which predict the existence of a massive inner core to the Oort cloud. Short-period comets now play a role in relation to the inner core as important as that formerly played by the observed near-parabolic flux in relation to the Oort cloud beyond r ⋍ 2 × 10 4 AU .
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