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Passing Star Influenced Comet Orbits in Our Solar System 70,000 Years Ago

posted by martyb on Saturday March 24 2018, @08:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the twinkle-twinkle dept.

takyon writes:

Scholz's star, a binary system consisting of a red dwarf and a brown dwarf, changed the trajectory of comets and other distant solar system objects when it passed just 0.82 light years from the Sun around 70,000 years ago:

At a time when modern humans were beginning to leave Africa and the Neanderthals were living on our planet, Scholz's star - named after the German astronomer who discovered it - approached less than a light-year from the Sun. Nowadays it is almost 20 light-years away, but 70,000 years ago it entered the Oort cloud, a reservoir of trans-Neptunian objects located at the confines of the solar system.

This discovery was made public in 2015 by a team of astronomers led by Professor Eric Mamajek of the University of Rochester (USA). The details of that stellar flyby, the closest documented so far, were presented in The Astrophysical Journal Letters [open, DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/800/1/L17] [DX].

Now two astronomers from the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain), the brothers Carlos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos, together with the researcher Sverre J. Aarseth of the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), have analyzed for the first time the nearly 340 objects of the solar system with hyperbolic orbits (very open V-shaped, not the typical elliptical), and in doing so they have detected that the trajectory of some of them is influenced by the passage of Scholz´s star.

"Using numerical simulations we have calculated the radiants or positions in the sky from which all these hyperbolic objects seem to come," explains Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, who together with the other coauthors publishes the results in the MNRAS Letters [open, DOI: 10.1093/mnrasl/sly019] [DX] journal.

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  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday March 24 2018, @10:54AM (3 children)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday March 24 2018, @10:54AM (#657461) Journal

    Why is it we get so few comments on Fine Articles like this?

    Well, why do people comment anyway?

    • To add information that's missing. I guess there are not many astrophysicists here who would be qualified to do that, assuming there's something missing to begin with.
    • To complain about wrong information. Either due to better knowledge (see previous point), or because of "sceptics". Passing stars is not a topic people relate enough that they formed a prejudice about it.
    • To make jokes about the topic. Do you know a good joke about passing stars that disturb comet orbits?
    • To post "obligatory" xkcd, Dilbert or SMBC links. Do you know any relevant here?
    • To comment on how things should be, and how much the reported facts agree with or deviate from that ideal. I don't think anyone has a strong opinion an whether stars should be allowed to pass that close by the sun and/or to disturb comet orbits. And it would make little sense to make rules for that anyway, as stars do not consciously decide where they go.
    • To comment on how that reported fact shows how the own world view is so much better than the opposing ones. I don't think a star that passed by in the distant past is a suitable target for this.
    • To make suggestions about what to do about it or events like it. Which is pretty futile in this case, as there's no way we could affect the trajectory of a star with current technology.
    • To discuss how we should behave in the light of that fact. I think everyone agrees here that a star that has passed by thousands of years ago does not require us to change our behaviour.
    • To troll. Of course, trolls usually concentrate on articles where one or more of the previous points apply, as this makes for much more effective trolling.
    • To complain about the quality of the submission. There's nothing wrong with this submission.
    • To complain that the story has been submitted. If there are any people who think that about stories like this, I'm sure they are in the minority.
    • To start a meta-discussion. Of course that can happen on any story.
    • To post off-topic trash. Of course that can happen on any story as well.
    • And finally, of course to answer one of the existing comments.

    So basically, very few of the reasons above apply here. And of those which do, most are actually undesirable anyway.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @06:49PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @06:49PM (#657623)
    I wonder how you classify your own comment :-)

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday March 24 2018, @08:41PM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday March 24 2018, @08:41PM (#657661) Journal

      As answer to an existing comment. Duh.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.

  • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday April 06 2018, @12:54AM

    by acid andy (1683) on Friday April 06 2018, @12:54AM (#663211) Homepage Journal

    Do you know a good joke about passing stars that disturb comet orbits?

    Err, why did Scholz's star pass just 0.82 light years from the Sun around 70,000 years ago, changing the trajectory of comets and other distant solar system objects?

    To get to the other side.

    --
    If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?