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."

Comments

Re:Nemesis

[wizardforce]

Would stars like this be a better theory for sending Oort Cloud material to the inner Solar system than a hypothetical unseen Nemesis

Yes.

Re:How will this look from the Earth?

[gront]

At closest approach it will be a first-magnitude star about as bright as Antares. from the wikipedia article link in the post. more about antares: http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/stars/antares-star/

Re:Nations are the wrong tools for this time scale

[Nutria]

I mean, we didn't sit there after the Wright brothers flew and decide that pursuing airplanes was a worthless endeavor, that we should just wait until we could build the 787, did we? Well, that's what we're doing with space. We've taken our first baby step, then given up on trying to walk because we can't yet run a marathon.

That's a very bad analogy, since it's 10 metric butt-loads easier and simpler to fly than it is to get into orbit: planes don't need to worry about cosmic radiation, gravity, little holes in the fuselage, etc, etc.

that we should just wait until we could build the 787

There have been only a handful of new commercial aviation designs in the last 30 years. The Boeing 737 & 747 were designed in the 1960s, the 757 & 767 in the 1960s. Since then, nothing but incremental improvements. Same on the military side.

Hell, even the Concorde design is 45 years old!

Aeronautical science and engineering are bordering practical and economic limits enforced on us by physics. For example: sure "we" could build another supersonic commercial aircraft, but there's no real purpose to expending all that energy to push through the atmosphere at 1400 mph, when 550 mph is oodles cheaper, and it's still 550 miles per hour!!! My (RIP) grandparents remembered Lindbergh and crossing the country in coal-powered trains.

And this isn't even mentioning that supersonic travel over land is prohibited because it's just not nice to shatter a jillion window panes 4 or 5 times a day!