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Another Star Passed Through Our Oort Cloud 70,000 Years Ago

Posted by Soulskill on from the thanks-for-not-hitting-us dept.

New submitter mrthoughtful writes: According to researchers at the University of Rochester, a recently discovered dim star (Scholz's star) passed through our Oort cloud 70,000 years ago. At its closest, it was about 52,000 AU distant from Sol, or about 0.8 light-years. This is still quite a distance — Voyager 1 is about 125 AU away right now — but it's far closer than Proxima Centauri's current 266,000 AU. Still, maybe the best way to engage in interstellar travel is just to wait until the time is right.

4 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. could this be related to the genetic-bottleneck? by suteny0r · · Score: 3, Interesting

    http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulw...

  2. Re: That is close! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That's right about the time that the human race barely avoided extinction. Perhaps not a coincidence?

    Coincidence. The paper suggests that even if it did perturb the Oort Cloud (which it probably didn't, at least, not the inner Oort Cloud), any rain of infalling comets that it kicked off will take about 2M years to get here.

    Which made me think of this bit from the end of the Hitchhiker's Guide:

    "Well I have got news, I have got news for you. It doesn't matter a pair foetid dingo's kidneys what you all choose to do from now on. Burn down the forests, anything. It won't make a scrap of difference. Two-million years you've got, and that's it. At the end of that, your race will be dead, gone, and good-riddance to you. Remember that. Two. Million. Years."

    With a sensible species, that might serve as motivation for us to get off this rock, or at least get far enough off the rock to establish a proper planetary defense system, but I guess itâ(TM)s time for another bath. Hmph. Pass me the sponge somebody will you?

  3. Re:That is close! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I wonder how many comets it kicked out of the cloud and have cause some ruckus here on Terra.

    There was a human population collapse right around that time. The population may have fallen to less than 10,000, and we nearly went extinct. This has been blamed on the eruption of Toba, an Indonesian volcano, but that may not have been the only cause.

  4. You think YOU are fast? by Cajun+Hell · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Wikipedia says that star is 17-23 light years away. If it passed nearby only 70000 years ago, then that means it must be moving at nearly at about 1/3000 to 1/4000 the speed of light. So, like, about ten times faster than the Space Shuttle or five times faster than V'ger.

    Forget ion drives; let's build star-hooks.

    --
    "Believe me!" -- Donald Trump