Posted on 04/10/2014 1:25:51 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Our sun may indeed have a far-flung gravitationally-bound companion — just not with the size or orbit that could have triggered periodicity in earth’s paleontological record, say astrophysicists now actively searching data from NASA’s WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) spacecraft.
For decades astronomers and paleontologists have debated whether our sun has a stellar mass M-dwarf companion dubbed “Nemesis” that could have caused a 26 million-year periodicity in earth’s cometary impact record.
Such a small M-dwarf star has long been ruled out by WISE data, since observers would surely have spotted an object larger than roughly five Jupiter masses.
However, John Matese and Dan Whitmire, two astrophysicists at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, continue to scour the spacecraft’s data for the signatures of “Tyche,” a totally different type of solar companion. Unlike Nemesis, Tyche (or Nemesis’ good sister), is a hypothetical 1 to 4 Jupiter-mass object that would lie about a third of a light year away, on a very long four million-year nearly circular solar orbit inclined roughly 45 degrees to the plane of our solar system...
Whitmire says there is an anomalous and “statistically-unlikely” number of comets along this band of sky, which suggests some form of gravitational perturbation. In Matese and Whitmire’s model, Tyche slightly perturbs the comets in conjunction with the galactic tide, a gravitational force produced by the disk of the Milky Way.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Apparently they’re also saved. Here’s one I made yesterday.
http://www.stefanom.org/spc/?view=1255819
I remember that one I think — parallel Earth, identical astronauts, like a Twilight Zone episode but without the plausibility. ;’)
Oh yeah, that must be it. ;’)
LOL!
Well! I just tried that, started with the dwarf star, and it went to 11 years and 42K points in about two seconds, game over. :’)
Okay, I put the dwarf star at 2 AU, and that’s it, seems to be working nice. The second attempt went a little longer than the first one, but ended quickly and only got to 64K, this one was over 128K (reminds me of the Apple II) before very long. Okay, checked it, over 300K, under 27 years.
It was a great movie for its time............
Maybe it saves as it goes, I couldn’t get it to upload.
I try to equalize a high mass object on the inside with a high mass object on the outside and then fill in the spaces.
I have gotten multiple planets in the same orbit.
And then there’s “When Worlds Collide” — the book was so obviously written by someone who knew nothing (and didn’t bother find out) about space travel that reading it should result in unintended mirth. “After Worlds Collide” is the sequel, and is actually more interesting, but originating before the War, it’s got some stupid politics of the time.
The movie of WWC is pretty hilarious; there’s a scene when they’re almost to the point where they’re going to land on the alien planet — and the movie antedates space travel — when the pilot is asked if they’re going to make it, his eyes go down, there’s a cutaway to what looks like the dashboard of a car with a fuel gauge, and he replies, “we’ll be okay, we’ve still got a quarter tank left”. Howls of derisive laughter, Bruce.
Hey, that might be fun, a second Earth in that default planet orbit, but at a different point, just like the twin Earth movie mentioned above...
It’s still tickin’ away, over 600K, and just hitting 55 years. By the time it reaches the 500 year limit it should be in the millions.
I was expecting the two planets on the same orbit to crash but they weren’t consistent in their speed due to the influence of other planets. They would get pretty close together and then spread to nearly halfway around the sun.
I was going to post this as a separate topic, but as it is archival, it makes a better sidebar to this topic.
Perturbing the Oort Cloud
Michael Szpir
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/perturbing-the-oort-cloud
[snip] At just about the time this issue was being debated, several Oort-cloud experts proposed that the cumulative effects of the local matter in the plane perpendicular to the galactic disk—the so-called disk tides—were far more significant than the intermittent gravitational effects of passing stars or giant molecular clouds... until 1995, when John Matese and Patrick Whitman of the University of Southwestern Louisiana and their colleagues Mauri Valtonen of Finland and Kimmo Innanen of Canada attempted to assess the quantitative effects of the disk tides. Their numerical models of Oort-cloud dynamics suggested that as the solar system oscillates through the galactic plane, the disk tides modulate the comet flux from the Oort cloud by a ratio of about 4 to 1, with the greatest effect in the midplane of the galaxy... Gene Shoemaker of the U.S. Geological Survey, who at one time believed that the periodicity was a “statistical fluke.” The work of Matese and his colleagues convinced him that the “impact surges are real... and that [the comet flux is] controlled by the fluctuating galactic tidal forces.” [/snip]
This is interesting, because eventually the comet focusing was seen as a product of an undiscovered planet in this system, with the galactic plane contributing only some of the kick. The more this galactic plane stimulus was studied as an alternative to the Nemesis hypothesis, the more it was realized to be insufficient.
A more recent study says that the regularity of that “pulse” of extinctions is evidence that there is no undiscovered body disturbing the Oort Cloud, because the perturbing body is so far out that it would not maintain a stable orbit over 500 million years.
My view is somewhat similar to the late Eugene Shoemaker’s former opinion about a fluke — the FACT is, the mass extinctions are due to large impacts, and there quite simply IS NO 30 million year clockwork interval. These impacts happen when they happen, and probably are due to the existing space debris that’s wandering around all the time, and just happens to arrive at the same place and time as the Earth, once in a great while.
IOW, looking at either the paleontological evidence of the mass extinctions of whole taxa, or at the large impact events that led to smaller mass extinction events (like Shoemaker’s first big paradigm-shifting discovery of that 15 million year old impact crater in Germany) there IS no periodicity — they happen when they happen.
This isn’t the nice clean regular predictable model that appeals so much to the human mind (or the career-minded), it’s a little thing known as a tall glass of reality. Using the phony periodicity as one leg of the syllogism results in a falsified model.
“When Worlds Collide” I read the book when I was a kid. It was plausible to a adolescent. It still seems plausible to me. It was written in the 1930’s IIRC. It would make a good movie if it were updated.
I remember the sky was green, but they didn’t know why until much later when it ‘snowed’ green snow and the sky became blue. It was algae that produce hydrogen floating high in the atmosphere, and eventually die, en mass, and fall to the ground. It was edible.
They found the remains of an extinct civilization that apparently knew they were going to die, and so prepared for their demise.
It was all very interesting. I never saw the movie or the sequel. But like all movies made from novels, probably had very little to do with the book other than use the title.....................
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Worlds_Collide
This is the synopsis of the book, not the movie........
Plot summary
Sven Bronson, a South African astronomer, discovers that a pair of rogue planets, Bronson Alpha and Bronson Beta, will soon enter the solar system. In eight months, they will pass close enough to cause catastrophic damage. Sixteen months later, after swinging around the Sun, Alpha will return to pulverize the Earth and leave. It is hoped that Bronson Beta will remain and assume a stable orbit.
Scientists led by Cole Hendron work desperately to build an atomic rocket to transport enough people, animals and equipment to Bronson Beta in an attempt to save the human race. Various countries attempt the same thing. Nations including the United States evacuate their coastal regions in preparation for the Bronson bodies’ first pass. Tidal waves sweep inland at a height of 750 feet (230 m), volcanic eruptions and earthquakes take their deadly toll, and the weather runs wild for more than two days. As a token of things to come, Bronson Alpha grazes and destroys the Moon.
Three men take a floatplane to check out conditions across the United States and meet with the President. All three are wounded fighting off a mob at their last stop, but manage to return with a precious sample of extremely heat-resistant metal one of them had noticed, solving the last remaining engineering obstacle: No material had been found to make rocket tubes capable of withstanding the heat of the atomic exhaust for very long.
Five months before the end, desperate mobs attack the camp, killing over half of Hendron’s people before they are defeated. With the rocket tube breakthrough, the survivors are able to build a second, larger ship that can carry everyone left alive. One ship makes a successful landing, but it is unknown if her sister ship or ships from other nations made it. They find that Beta is habitable .
The sequel, After Worlds Collide, details the fate of the survivors on Bronson Beta.
I went back and checked maybe five minutes ago, and the years and points had barely budged, as if the thing stopped right after I’d last looked at it, which was quite a while ago. Now it seems to be fine, it’s over a million points, and not quite 90 years.
Heh, yeah, one of the ridiculous details that made it from the book was, an unnamed unobtainium type metal needed for the engines, but was in short supply. There was going to be a drawing of lots from among the few thousand people sequestered in the compound (I think it was in Michigan) to build the rocket, the winners would go, the rest would stay behind and die with everyone else. Very late going, another deposit of the metal was found somewhere, making it possible to build a second, even larger rocket, so that everyone on the project could be saved.
> Tidal waves sweep inland at a height of 750 feet (230 m), volcanic eruptions and earthquakes take their deadly toll, and the weather runs wild for more than two days. As a token of things to come, Bronson Alpha grazes and destroys the Moon.
The premise in the book was similar, but again, doofus-like — the two planets consisted of a smaller, Earth-sized body, being pulled along by the much larger “A” body. The calculations were said to show that when the “A” body struck the Earth, the impact would loosen the grip on the “B” body, which would enter a nice orbit around the Sun and the “A” body would, I forget, exit the Solar System, fall into the Sun, something like that.
In the sequel, the Earth team got to the planet and found that it was thawed out already (it had been in the deep cold of space for untold eons of course), still barren, but previously the home of some alien civilization. They found a wrecked vehicle on the side of the ruins of a road, and the remains of a dead alien inside.
They also discovered that German commies had built an escape rocket in secret and managed to arrive on “B”, but had somehow managed to forget to bring along any women, so they wound up having a big fight over that. Classic pulp fiction.
That’s nice that the URL works, even without the uploading.
I wish they would let you choose the type of sun and where to place your first planet. Scale it up to more than 2 AU.
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