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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?
From what I learned in my Texas astronomy class the comets will harmlessly splash against the crystal spheres that support the planets and sun.
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!
In the year 1,502,000....
*The year 1,502,010
www.RacquetUp.org - Helping Detroit Youth
Larry King. He'll still be alive.
In the year 1,502,000....
War was beginning
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
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/
Its in 1.5 million years. We will have lazors
Only because the sharks will be running the planet by then.
Have gnu, will travel.
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.