Originally posted by cormac mac airt
The Oort Cloud is 50,000 AU from our sun. Based on an approximate average of the orbital velocities of the planets in our solar system, 60,000 mph, it
would take over 10,000 years to reach our sun. That's one way. What would be bringing it back? Also, if traveling nearly light speed, at 1800 years
one way it would be 900 times further out than the diameter of our solar system. Again, what would bring it back? The math doesn't add up.
Ok, lets do a small calculation...
Recently, researchers discovered what might be a brown dwarf wandering alone through space just 13 light-years from Earth -- practically in our
backyard. And there might be many more, some even closer, researchers say. But they would be cooler, fainter and even tougher to spot with existing
telescopes.
www.space.com...
The velocity of Brown dwarfs, like neutron stars could be well above 500 miles/sec. That means they could travel 15,768,000,000 per year or
78,840,000,000 miles in 5 years or approx 80,000,000,000 miles. Pluto is 3,000,000,000 miles away on the average.
That means at present, the BD is about 26 times the distance Pluto is from here. It may be extremely faint, emitting negligible IR/UV radiation. Is
that probably the reason why it hasn’t been detected as yet? It may be heading toward the Solar System at a breathtaking 1,800,000 miles per hour!!
A tad faster than my Ferrari!!
Seriously, a fairly large object traveling at that velocity, just 'skimming' our Solar System would be disastrous. At that speed it's probably
Armageddon in 5 years time! That's 2012/2013!! Does that date ring a bell? You bet it does!!
Cheers!
[edit on 24-2-2008 by mikesingh]