Wednesday 17 October 2007

Nemesis: does another star orbit our sun ?

Some years ago a scientist by the name of Richard Muller formulated a controversial theory regarding the possibility of a second star that may orbit our sun in the outer reaches of the solar system. Formulated in 1983, the theory was designed in part to explain a seemingly regular interval of 26 million years between mass extinctions on earth. Its now widely accepted that these extinctions do occur, one of them killed the dinosaurs,  and were normally the result of asteroid or comet impacts. But what sent these objects careening toward earth every 26 million years? Muller believed it might just be due to a second star.  He named it Nemesis after the Greek goddess of divine retribution, and suspects that if it exists it would probably be a common red dwarf type star. He also thinks it should be easily visible from earth, if we knew where to look. If it exists, its almost certainly already been photographed, but simply hasn't been noticed. Stranger things have happened in the history of astronomy. If its out there,  Muller suspects it must orbit very distantly at a whopping 1 to 3 light years from earth, quite distant when you consider that the nearest seperate star is Proxima Centauri at 4.

22 light years away. Nemesis' orbit would be irregular, sometimes making a closer approach, near enough to disturb the grouping of icy comets at the edge of the solar system known as the oort cloud, and sending some of them our way.

1 Comment:

Anonymous said...

Our sun doesn't have enough gravity for an object that far away to orbit it
if it had that much gravity then the sun would implode upon itself.