70,000 Years Ago a Red Dwarf Star Flyby Our Solar System by Less Than a Light Year

Astronomers say a red dwarf star and its brown dwarf companion passed within a light-year of our own sun 70,000 years ago, moving through the comets in the outer reaches of the Oort Cloud that surrounds our solar system.

The star is known as WISE J072003.20-084651.2, or Scholz's star. Today, it's 20 light-years away from us in the constellation Monoceros. But in a study published by Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers say it passed right by us at a distance of 5 trillion miles (8 trillion kilometers, or 52,000 astronomical units, or 0.8 light-years). No other star has been known to come that close.

Scholz's star would typically be too faint to be seen with the naked eye from Earth, even during the close encounter. But the research team, led by the University of Rochester's Eric Mamajek, says there's a chance that our ancestors in Africa might have seen a magnetically induced flare-up.

Alien Star Missed Us by Less Than a Light-Year, Scientists Say

NEMESIS NEMESIS... Or it may have not even been visible , that is so cool imagine if at that time the system had life and planed a visit to the place they would near miss, less than 1 light year away makes ancient aliens not so impossible, if all the millions things that have to happen did happen of course, but cool anyways.

Regardless of this, the news that in 470k years from now the solar system could end due to another flyby is now less likely as this new star will actually cross us from further away than the one that did merely 70k years ago, doom averted

arxiv

Hey what if some of the Oort Cloud objects where left behind by the star? or what if the star picked something from there.

Neat find, hard to imagine something like that.

Second

originally posted by: Indigent
... so cool imagine if at that time the system had life and planed a visit to the place they would near miss, less than 1 light year away makes ancient aliens not so impossible, if all the millions things that have to happen did happen of course, but cool anyways...

Yeah, but 70,000 years ago would have been really, really ancient aliens.

The story of the Anunnaki, the Nazca Lines, India's 'Vimanas', the pyraminds, Easter Island Moai, the Dogans, etc. would have all been "recent history" compared to 70,000 years ago.

If the red dwarf was dragging a brown dwarf along with it, would it be fair to suggest that planets were along for the ride too?

a reply to: Indigent

This might explain the Quaternary extinction event.

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

Who said they arrived righ away?

They may not have been so advanced and the 0.8 took them 65k years

Six trillion miles away. Sorta like saying some drove through a near by state.

Meh, never mind ancient aliens, more like a solid clue to past extinction level collisions... and yup, fit's pretty well with a big extinction (within 10,000 years anyway... and geologically it's close enough).

I've always been partial to the 'periodic catastrophe/civilization rise and fall' idea... taken to extremes with Atlantis, Zitchen, etc.

There are some really odd objects found in rock that at least suggest a past human civilization in what would be too far in the past for our current ideas of a linear climb to civilization. The Dorchester cup and the aluminum dredge from Eastern Europe are two that come to mind.

I'm still waiting for that superhighway to be found in million year old bedrock, though. But there have been rumors... heh.

Either way, imagine living 70,000 bpe and seeing a pair of suns pass by... carrying their wild entourage... dragons indeed.

Some more on it…

link within the link

The answer to "How close does a star have to come into the solar system to perturb enough to trigger comets coming into the inner solar system?" A star within a parsec or so could perturb "some" comets towards coming into the inner solar system, but there are fewer comets in the Oort Cloud that far out to perturb.

a reply to: Indigent

We should consider other ways to travel if we want to discuss it. Ancient aliens might not be attached to our space-time ideas.

Nice find!

African ruins date back that far.....(80,000 yr) this could have been something affecting early men....perhaps an event they pictured on cave walls or other ancient paintings....ala Wallace Thornhill....

They say it is too faint so might not have even been visible to the naked eye by man 70,000 years ago. Is it possible that it could have been brighter back then? Either way, they say the electromagnetic discharge would have been visible. Imagine that.

Its a very good question weirdguy asks. I will take it a step further, in case this is not already what the weirdguy was implying, and ask: could there have been a transfer of planets either way? Which systems star had the greater gravity? Are all of our planets going the same way, clockwise or counterclockwise, around the sun? What about their rotations? That could be a clue as well. Then again, it could have just joined our direction and normal rotation.

How would we know? Would a planet from another system have wildly different elements or ratios of elements?

I just gotta' pop in and say...

DAAANNNNGGGG!

How fast are those things going?! For them to pass here only 70k years ago and already be 20 light years from us?! If we are moving in exact opposite directions, that would equate for slowing it down some but still.... Dang!

It blows my mind to think about the sheer size and speeds we are dealing with when it is on the Universe scale.

And, to think We are made of Stardust that is billions of years old.. My fingers have been inside of a star... Woah.. my hands are huge... do you ever just look at your hands? I guess the Hippy is kickin' in... Trippy

Interesting story. I would imagine that if there was intelligent life in that other star system, if our primitive ancestors couldn't see their star, they could surely see our star and if that alien race had the ability to space travel they surely would have done it.

I pulled these images from POSS1 and 2. So the star moving in the middle is Scholz's star. What's the other one next to it? It seems to have a very similar high amount of proper motion, so it's probably relatively close like Scholz's. Is it related? It's not the brown dwarf binary if Wikipedia is accurate; that's supposed to be only 0.8 AUs from the primary.

a reply to: Indigent

Well if indeed 70,000 years ago a red dwarf star missed our system by less than a light year(Technically i think that would still count as a hit) it does not seem to have made much of an impact regarding Humanity's continued existence on our world. Interesting thread all the same i love anything pertaining to Nibiru or Nemesis.

so including sol , does this new information mean that we are in a trinary star system. the articles ive so far read do not make this clear.

or should I say ,are there any gravitational relationships with these newly revealed neighbouring stars, to our sun ?

funbox

Not too surprising. I've always been a proponent of the theory that objects with long elliptical orbits were caused by a close passing star. No Nibiru/Nemesis/Tyche needed.

a reply to: funbox

no they passed by and are now 20 light years away