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Alien Scholz’s star passed through solar system 70,000 years ago
Saturday, November 14, 2015 19:14
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Thursday, November 12, 2015
Alien Scholz’s star passed through solar system 70,000 years ago
An alien star passed through our Solar System just 70,000 years ago, astronomers have discovered.
No other star is known to have approached this close to us.
An international team of researchers says it came five times closer than our current nearest neighbour – Proxima Centauri.
The object, a red dwarf known as Scholz’s star, cruised through the outer reaches of the Solar System – a region known as the Oort Cloud.
Scholz’s star was not alone; it was accompanied on its travels by an object known as a brown dwarf. These are essentially failed stars that lacked the necessary mass to get fusion going in their cores.
Observations of the dim star’s trajectory suggest that 70,000 years ago this cosmic infiltrator passed within 0.8 light years of the Sun. By comparison, Proxima Centauri is 4.2 light years away.
