"A star is hurtling towards us. It will almost certainly clip the outskirts of the solar system and send comets towards Earth.
Vadim Bobylev of the Pulkovo Observatory in St Petersburg, Russia, modelled the paths of neighbouring stars using data from the European Space Agency's Hipparcos satellite and from ground-based measurements of the speeds of stars. He found four previously unidentified stars that will pass within roughly 9.5 light years of Earth. They will tug on the Oort cloud, a diffuse cloud of icy objects around the solar system thought to be a reservoir of comets.
However, the biggest threat comes from another star, Gliese 710, an orange dwarf now some 63 light years away but zooming our way at 14 kilometres per second. Bobylev's calculations suggest Gliese 710 has an 86 per cent chance of passing through the Oort cloud. This could scatter millions of comets into paths that cross Earth's orbit..."
this one's for dad
ReplyDeletedid they give a timeline? Will it be tomorrow or down the road a few thousand years?
ReplyDeleteAre you trying to make my tween post look juvenile?