Binary Red Dwarf Star System Crossed Into Our Solar System 70,000 years ago. Confirmed.

a reply to: Fowlerstoad


Hate to burst your bubble, but if the system did what the animation shows then no one would have seen the star system. Think about it, you can not see the Orrt cloud can you and the star system barely touched the Oort cloud

a reply to: EndOfDays77


Nice pictures of clouds man

a reply to: norhoc

I dunno ... red dwarf stars are pretty dim. I know we cannot see Proxima Centauri with the naked eye, and it is 4 light years away, located in the Centauri triple star system with Alpha Centauri, that outshines it.

But, at less than 1 light year, I think we might see a red dwarf star with the naked eye. The authors of the article seem to think so, but, admittedly it is hard to test, because now Proxima Centauri is currently the closest red dwarf for comparison, and indeed we cannot see it. *shrug*

a reply to: Fowlerstoad

Cool, they found Nibiru......so when is it coming back?

a reply to: Fowlerstoad
Given the red dwarf's absolute magnitude and the closest distance it got to us, it's possible to calculate the apparent magnitude it would have had as seen from Earth.

The result is that it would have been apparent magnitude of 11.4 - too faint to be seen with the naked eye.
A star is expected to pass through the Oort Cloud every 100,000 years or so.
www.pas.rochester.edu...

That's a bummer, getting such a prominent "visitor" and not even being able to see it without a telescope.

a reply to: firerescue

Thank you

From one FF/ARFF/PHRN to another .👍

People forgetting just how big space really is.
The ice core data suggests that it had little or no effect on Earth.

a reply to: wildespace

Thank you so much for that calculation

originally posted by: wildespace
a reply to: Fowlerstoad
Given the red dwarf's absolute magnitude and the closest distance it got to us, it's possible to calculate the apparent magnitude it would have had as seen from Earth.

The result is that it would have been apparent magnitude of 11.4 - too faint to be seen with the naked eye.
A star is expected to pass through the Oort Cloud every 100,000 years or so.
www.pas.rochester.edu...

That's a bummer, getting such a prominent "visitor" and not even being able to see it without a telescope.

Yes the article linked in the OP is misleading when it says:

"It is likely that our ancestors saw its faint reddish light in the nights of prehistory."

As you say it is probably impossible that they had any continuous view of the star. There is a caveat however. Red Dwarfs are knows to have active and relatively large flares before they get too old, and the flares might have been visible from Earth if their magnitude was much brighter than the star itself, in which case humans might have seen some mysterious flashes from time to time:

pdfs.semanticscholar.org...

If W0720 experienced occasional flares similar to those of the active M8 star SDSS J022116.84 + 194020.4 (Schmidt et al. 2014), then the star may have been rarely visible with the naked eye from Earth ( < V 6 ; D < - V 4 ) for minutes or hours during the flare events. Hence, while the binary system was too dim to see with the naked eye in its quiescent state during its flyby of the solar system ∼70 kya, flares by the M9.5 primary may have provided short-lived transients visible to our ancestors.

They also give a brighter estimate than yours of apparent magnitude of 10.3 but that's still saying it was maybe 40 times too dim to see instead of your estimate suggesting it's 100 times too dim to see, so they wouldn't see the "quiescent" (meaning not flaring) star with either estimate.

originally posted by: firerescue
a reply to: Bigburgh

Found rare isotope of iron, iron-60, produced in supernovas in deep ocean sediments

Conjecture is the radiation blasting the earth from such events may have altered evolution

phys.org...

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

70,000 ya and we think WE live in interesting times?!

Holy Crap!

I feel bad for them. Talk about life sucks?!

We are so lucky it's unbelievable.

But we are here because of that.

Don't the Mayans say the next ELE will be by fire?

Cool, hope i'm not around.

originally posted by: Fowlerstoad
a reply to: stormcell

Wow ... that is interesting. Kind of close in time for coincidence, but I wonder how the events could be linked by cause?

Coincidences do happen. There's no reason to think there was any connection. While the star had a significant effect on objects it passed in the outer Oort cloud, that was far away. For comparison, Pluto is extremely distant and it took our fastest spacecraft almost 10 years to reach it. At the same speed it would have taken over 11,000 years to reach the "fly-by" star, so it was a rather distant "fly-by", and also it was a rather small binary star system.

originally posted by: burgerbuddy

originally posted by: firerescue
a reply to: Bigburgh

Found rare isotope of iron, iron-60, produced in supernovas in deep ocean sediments

Conjecture is the radiation blasting the earth from such events may have altered evolution

phys.org...

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

70,000 ya and we think WE live in interesting times?!

Holy Crap!

I feel bad for them. Talk about life sucks?!

We are so lucky it's unbelievable.

But we are here because of that.

Don't the Mayans say the next ELE will be by fire?

Cool, hope i'm not around.

There's thought to have been one 11,000 years ago. This would have been at the time of the last ice age:

abob.libs.uga.edu...

The math does not add up.

It appears that 70,000 years ago, a binary system consisting of a small red dwarf star and a brown dwarf (Scholz's star ... now 20 light years distant) crossed through the outer reaches of our own solar system, according to a report from 2015, and this has now been confirmed.

how does a star system pass through the outer reaches of our solar system 70,000 years ago.
but now its 20 light years away.

that is a fast moving star system.

originally posted by: ANNED
The math does not add up.

It appears that 70,000 years ago, a binary system consisting of a small red dwarf star and a brown dwarf (Scholz's star ... now 20 light years distant) crossed through the outer reaches of our own solar system, according to a report from 2015, and this has now been confirmed.

how does a star system pass through the outer reaches of our solar system 70,000 years ago.
but now its 20 light years away.

that is a fast moving star system.

LOL i was just thinking the same... WTH....
How would you calculate actual speed of
the star then?!?

originally posted by: ANNED
The math does not add up.

It appears that 70,000 years ago, a binary system consisting of a small red dwarf star and a brown dwarf (Scholz's star ... now 20 light years distant) crossed through the outer reaches of our own solar system, according to a report from 2015, and this has now been confirmed.

how does a star system pass through the outer reaches of our solar system 70,000 years ago.
but now its 20 light years away.

that is a fast moving star system.

It's actually slow meaning that solar system is traveling the same way we are. Our solar system travels at 828,000 km/h or 514,000 mph. At that rate our solar system would travel 1 light year in 1300 yrs. Of course 10 light years takes 13000 yrs and 20 light years would take 26000 yrs. So if after 70000 yrs it's still that close this tells us it's moving in our general direction.

originally posted by: ANNED
The math does not add up.

It appears that 70,000 years ago, a binary system consisting of a small red dwarf star and a brown dwarf (Scholz's star ... now 20 light years distant) crossed through the outer reaches of our own solar system, according to a report from 2015, and this has now been confirmed.

how does a star system pass through the outer reaches of our solar system 70,000 years ago.
but now its 20 light years away.

that is a fast moving star system.

So, it moved 19 light years ('cause it was approx 1 ly away from us) in 70,000 years. That's the rate of 0.00027142857 light years (or 17.1654351182 AU) per year. That's not very fast for a star.

Scholz's star's radial velocity (how fast it's moving directly away from us) is measured at 83.1 km/s.

a reply to: Fowlerstoad

Looks like it’s traveling about 195,694 miles per hour. Cool

Omg Niburu

a reply to: moebius

Ah, so at no time did these objects actually pass through the Solar System proper. They never came close to, leave alone actually entered the Heliosphere.

Suggesting that a thing has passed through our Solar System, just because it mingled with the Oort cloud a bit, is like suggesting that someone who stumbled into your back yard while drunk, and never made it a foot past the fence before turning around and backing off, is a home invader.

a reply to: Fowlerstoad

Thangs fort posting this!

...twisting, turning, through the nebberrr...