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Nearby Star Forecast To Skirt Solar System
PipianJ writes "A recent preprint posted on arXiv by Vadim Bobylev presents some startling new numbers about a future close pass of one of our stellar neighbors. Based on studies of the Hipparcos catalog, Bobylev suggests that the nearby orange dwarf Gliese 710 has an 86% chance of skirting the outer bounds of the Solar System and the hypothesized Oort Cloud in the next 1.5 million years. As the Oort Cloud is thought to be the source of many long-period comets, the gravitational effects of Gliese's passing could send a shower of comets into the inner Solar System, threatening Earth. This news about Gliese 710 isn't exactly new, but it's one of the first times the probability of this near-miss has been quantified."
XENU SAVE US!
... I'll get right on it!
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
Would stars like this be a better theory for sending Oort Cloud material to the inner Solar system than a hypothetical unseen Nemesis?
Looks like we're going to need some mega firepower to deal with this threat. Let's blow the bastage up to kingdom come before it gets here. We have here a cyber recreation of Dr. Teller, whose devoted his now vast computational facilities to devising a star destroying laser beam.
This is my sig.
in the next 1.5 million years. As the Oort Cloud is thought to be the source of many long-period comets, the gravitational effects of Gliese's passing could send a shower of comets into the inner Solar System, threatening Earth
So, in 1.5 million years we might possibly be threatened by some comets? Something tells me that unless we do something incredibly stupid in the next 1.5 million years, a lot of humanity isn't going to be on earth.
So, in short, how is this news? I don't think anyone is going to be around in 1.5 million years.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
the gravitational effects of Gliese's passing could send a shower of comets into the inner Solar System, threatening Earth.
Its in 1.5 million years. We will have lazors (Firefox spell check couldn't figure out it's lasers) to shoot the comets by then.
I care not for your karma and your mod points.
In the year 1,502,000....
From what I learned in my Texas astronomy class the comets will harmlessly splash against the crystal spheres that support the planets and sun.
They are slightly off... its Nibiru/Marduk... or heraps this near miss is what sends Planet X hurtiling our way. "Sometime in the next 1.5 million years" woul then translate to 2.5 years from now, and the near miss is on 12.21.2012. Time to get insured!
We must arm NOW! That star *is* a weapon of mass destruction! We don't want the smoking gun to be a black hole! In this vial I have a sample of Hydrogen-- of the EXACT SAME MATERIAL detected in Gliese 710!
H. G. Wells, "The Star" (1911)
It was on the first day of the New Year that the announcement was made, almost simultaneously from three observatories, that the motion of the planet Neptune, the outermost of all the planets that wheel about the sun, had become very erratic....
Beyond the orbit of Neptune there is space, vacant so far as human observation has penetrated, without warmth or light or sound, blank emptiness, for twenty million times a million miles. That is the smallest estimate of the distance to be traversed before the very nearest of the stars is attained. And, saving a few comets more unsubstantial than the thinnest flame, no matter had ever to human knowledge crossed this gulf of space, until early in the twentieth century this strange wanderer appeared....
On the third day of the new year the newspaper readers of two hemispheres were made aware for the first time of the real importance of this unusual apparition in the heavens. "A Planetary Collision," one London paper headed the news, and proclaimed Duchaine's opinion that this strange new planet would probably collide with Neptune....
And when next it rose over Europe everywhere were crowds of watchers on hilly slopes, on house-roofs, in open spaces, staring eastward for the rising of the great new star. It rose with a white glow in front of it, like the glare of a white fire, and those who had seen it come into existence the night before cried out at the sight of it. "It is larger," they cried. "It is brighter!" And, indeed the moon a quarter full and sinking in the west was in its apparent size beyond comparison, but scarcely in all its breadth had it as much brightness now as the little circle of the strange new star.
"It is brighter!" cried the people clustering in the streets. But in the dim observatories the watchers held their
breath and peered at one another. "_It is nearer_," they said. "_Nearer!_"
[Most of the story tells of how star approaches close to Earth, creating considerable havoc...]
But the star had passed, and men, hunger-driven and gathering courage only slowly, might creep back to their ruined cities, buried granaries, and sodden fields. Such few ships as had escaped the storms of that time came stunned and shattered and sounding their way cautiously through the new marks and shoals of once familiar ports....
The Martian astronomers--for there are astronomers on Mars, although they are very different beings from men--were naturally profoundly interested by these things. They saw them from their own standpoint of course. "Considering the mass and temperature of the missile that was flung through our solar system into the sun," one wrote, "it is astonishing what a little damage the earth, which it missed so narrowly, has sustained. All the familiar continental markings and the masses of the seas remain intact, and indeed the only difference seems to be a shrinkage of the white discoloration (supposed to be frozen water) round either pole." Which only shows how small the vastest of human catastrophes may seem, at a distance of a few million miles.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Bah! This "near miss" was predicted thousands of years ago by the Sumarians and it winds up responsible hurling a planet toward us that we can't see right now. Planet's Name? Nirbiru/Marduk/Planet X, or whatever they're calling it these days.
Of course, that means that "sometime in the next 1.5 million years" should probably read "in the next 2 years" so that the Planet X has sufficient time to reach us by December 21st, 2012. Time to Get Insured!
So what are the odds of this thing being captured into a long orbit? I would imagine this will set off a shower like dropping a ball of water into a screen, but I'm also curious if this will just graze us, or if our suns gravity would be sufficient to actually capture this dwarf and create a binary system?
1.5 Million years though. At least we have some time...
Global warming melts ice. Quick, run your cars 24/7 and heat up the earth so we can melt those comets before they hit the ground* and do damage!
My webcomic
Larry King. He'll still be alive.
I've already found a way to live that long, and deflect any danger. We all live in complete harmony in that age, with all the comforts imaginable.
As long as you don't try to prove me wrong, thanks to entanglement it's a done deal.
You can thank me at the bar.
False alarm. We were a couple of decimal places off. It won't reach the Oort Cloud for another 1.5 years and the comets shouldn't reach the inner solar system until some time in December of 2012 so there's nothing to worry about.
Look, if you're going to have to get rid of Thread, you've got to use the right tools for the job...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Any astronomy types out there who can figure this out?
Why is Snark Required?
Over the past century, space travel's usefulness has been limited to war, boosting political egos, threatening war, communications satellites, Earth-observation satellites, and a bit of astronomy. Yes, there have been commercial spinoffs, like developing Velcro andTang(tm) powdered orange-colored juice, but the engineers and scientists who could have built us something useful, like the franistan, where busy doing militarized space programs instead.
You can't colonize space unless you can build a sustainable closed ecosystem that runs on sunlight, and we're not even close. We've built a few toy terrariums that failed, like the Biosphere, but our one significant experiment in terraforming has also been failing, making this planet look less and less like the Terra that we started with. We're not going to be able to build space colonies big enough to house a significant fraction of humanity until we've learned how to keep an already-mostly-working planet working.
Furthermore, real space colonization is an immense project - it's not just throwing a few canned monkeys into orbit that for a few billion dollars of investment per seat, it's a project about as big and economically transformative as, say, Agriculture or Cities, and unless the Great Nanotech Singularity saves our asses without burying them in Grey Goo, we're going to have to keep the planet working well for probably as long a timescale as we've spent on those experiments. It's a Really Really big project, not one of those quick and dirty experiments like the Industrial Revolution or the Nation-State. Fortunately, 1.5 million years is a respectably long time - it's 100 times as long as we've had Civilization, 30-40 times as long as we've been our current species, more along the scale of how long we've had modern Acheulean stone tools or maybe fire.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
... it'll capture Pluto. Not that we'd care one way or the other.
Have gnu, will travel.
There is a star moving close that is very different from ours. It moves to the oort could, and therefore definitely makes it visible. There is so much to learn.
And all you can think about is how it “threatens” earth? Have you seen the space in the solar system? Have you calculated the likeliness? And in 1.5 million years? I wouldn’t be surprised if we manage to have a congested hyperspace freeway to Gliese 710 by then! Or if we are long extinct and replaced by ravens, other apes, dolphins and octopuses. Nature wouldn’t care anyway.
Please stop the fearmongering, if you want to be taken seriously. And enjoy the wonders of nature.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
The Technology Review blog claims that one star approaches within a parsec once every two million years. I understand the Wolf 424 system will also approach within a parsec (nearest approach is supposed to be somewhere around a lightyear) 9,000 years from now. It seems unlikely to me that the frequency is that low. Maybe they're counting large stars, not the red dwarfs (Wolf 424 is a binary red dwarf pair).
Providing that humanity still exists in the year 1.5M but hasn't yet spread to other solar systems, this is a huge opportunity: Rather than needing to travel 3-4 light years in order to reach another star, we'll need to travel less than one light year -- thus making the trip both faster and much cheaper.
Who knows, it might even be possible to slowly spread across the entire galaxy without ever venturing into interstellar space.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
In the year 1,502,000....
War was beginning
What happen?
With light speed travel so unlikely it's a rare chance to visit another solar system (if we're still around then).
"I don't suspect we'll have completed the search for candidate objects until mid-2012, and then we may need up to a year of time to complete telescopic follow-up of those objects," said Kirkpatrick."
Too little, too late ... If we've only started a few years before, we might have saved ourselves from 2012 :P
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I always knew these idiots were right. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIDlqR1jnKA The reptile people are just hiding it from us.
And so will disappear the last sign than man was ever here.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Astronomy picture of the day for December 11, 1999.
The star field shown [in the image at the above link] is based on the Palomar Digitized Sky Survey and is 1/4 degree wide (about half the diameter of the full moon).
Uhm. Are you living on the same planet the rest of us are?
The sheer, seething mass of rampant stupidity is only slightly below the point where it implodes and collapses into a stupidity singularity.
If we ARE actually alive in 1.5 million years, it'll prove two things.
1: There IS a God.
2: He's one warped motherfucker for keeping us around.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
...I, for one, welcome our new stellar driven icy overlords.
We're all going to die in 1.5 million years!
...so, he isn't necessarily saying that it will be 1.5M years before this happens, or even in ~1.5M years, but sometime within that timeframe. We ought not deduce that we have such a long time to prepare, nor fail to account for the possibility of other intruding or impacting bodies headed our way even sooner.
I would have wished those where my words. It seems only very little people have the right perspective on space travel, if I see the responses to this comment.
I also doubt whether space colonisation is the answer. If we are still around at that time, we probably have mapped out most of the objects in the Oort cloud and/or build a deflection system for commets that might threat Earth (or possibly some other planets/moons in our solar system that we have inhabited).
My ride home...
Now, how do you change the velocity of the solar system by 200 meters/sec ? That's all we need to dodge Gliese 710, and we have a few hundred thousand years to think about it.
I did mention earth-observation satellites and communications satellites, but solar power satellites are potentially another useful technology for actually doing useful things on Earth.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks