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A Star Grazed Our Solar System 70,000 Years Ago, Early Humans Likely Saw It (space.com)
schwit1 shares a report from Space.com: Some distant objects in our solar system bear the gravitational imprint of a small star's close flyby 70,000 years ago, when modern humans were already walking the Earth, a new study suggests. In 2015, a team of researchers announced that a red dwarf called Scholzs star apparently grazed the solar system 70,000 years ago, coming closer than 1 light-year to the sun. For perspective, the suns nearest stellar neighbor these days, Proxima Centauri, lies about 4.2 light-years away. The astronomers came to this conclusion by measuring the motion and velocity of Scholzs star -- which zooms through space with a smaller companion, a brown dwarf or "failed star" -- and extrapolating backward in time. Scholz's star passed by the solar system at a time when early humans and Neanderthals shared the Earth. The star likely appeared as a faint reddish light to anyone looking up at the time, researchers with the new study said. The study has been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters.
This story is another perfect example for why the "settled science" academic approach absolutely fails to produce a rigorous result, in practice. We need to be systematically tracking controversial science claims on a social network which is dedicated to crowdsourcing this information.
It also demonstrates -- once again -- an overt bias against the Electric Universe amongst the scientific community and science journalists. This is really straightforward, guys. Let me explain.
Alongside the core scientific claim that cosmic plasmas should be modeled as laboratory plasmas, the Thunderbolts Group has also proposed that the earliest human stories are best interpreted through the lens of plasma physics. And although there is not actually a consensus on these interpretations, what some comparative mythologists in their group have concluded is that the best way to explain the earliest stories mankind told -- mainly the mythological archetypes -- is with the suggestion that a foreign star entered into our solar system in human-historical times.
Notice the remarkable similarity in the two claims. We really have to dig into the very fine details in order to discern the differences between this mainstream science claim and the Electric Universe claim.
But, also -- importantly -- notice that there was no immediate labeling of this mainstream version of the idea as "pseudoscience", even though the two claims are basically the same -- and -- more to the point, imo -- no demonstrable realization amongst the critics of the Electric Universe that this is what they are claiming. What I have observed is that people are against the Electric Universe brand -- not the idea itself -- for if a person can be convinced that some sort of foreign incursion has occurred in recent human-historical times, the suggestion that we can then interpret the earliest human stories through the lens of this idea is a very short leap of imagination.
Put another way, people are dead-set against an idea which they don't really know much about. This sort of behavior is not in the spirit of rigorous science, and it can actually lead to tremendous confusion in the sciences, for it institutionalizes a lack of rigor and biases into this process which is widely regarded as secure from such things. And, to be clear, this problem is far, far bigger than just the EU; this lack of rigor is occurring across all of the scientific disciplines. There are some controversial claims -- e.g., the work of Dr. Gerald Pollack on water and gels -- which is routinely coopted by the mainstream, for the simple reason that not even the mainstream researchers have tracked the controversial science claim. These mainstream researchers generally have no idea that they are vindicating or copying other peoples' work -- because we've yet to build out the tools which would track these claims. The information is all spread out, and lacks a system of organization which can facilitate crowdsourcing and discovery.
We really need to think more deeply about the implications of the "settled science" approach to science, for it really seems like a factory for mistakes which can, in theory, cause us to spin our wheels endlessly.
People will of course howl because I said the "EU" words, but if you really want to see substantial progress in the sciences over your lifetime, you'll think more deeply about the more general case, and you will favor the approach which results in a more rigorous scientific result. I invoke the Electric Universe to make my point, but this problem is truthfully much bigger than any individual disagreement in the sciences.