Sun May Still Have Low-Mass Solar Companion, Say Astrophysicists Searching NASA WISE Mission Data

Forbes ^ | 3/31/2013 | Bruce Dorminey

[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.

[SunkenCiv]

Image Credit: Penn State University

[SunkenCiv]

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[SunkenCiv]

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Google news searches: exoplanet · exosolar · extrasolar ·

[cuban leaf]

[Dallas59]

Well...as long as it isn’t a danger to Muslims or cause globullsmarmingwarmingheat...then it’s ok.

[Army Air Corps]

The origins of Valerie Jarrett explained...

[Red Badger]

Nibiru?..................

[Red Badger]

[UCANSEE2]

Brings up a question.

How small can a ‘star’ be ?

[Sideshow Bob]

How small can a ‘star’ be ?

I dunno. Ask Alec Baldwin?

[BenLurkin]

[al baby]

omg you mean man

[messierhunter]

Depends on whose definition you go by. If you define a star as a large gaseous celestial body which undergoes fusion at some point in its life, then the minimum mass is around 13 times Jupiter's mass; below that mass and it will not fuse deuterium early in its life (brown dwarf stars do actually undergo fusion, but their deuterium supply is consumed relatively quickly on a cosmic scale).

http://www.universetoday.com/19237/dense-exoplanet-creates-classification-calamity/

Some try to define it by the method by it formed, but I find that to be a bit silly; not only can that be difficult to definitively determine, but to me the way in which it formed is less important than what it became. If I could be so bold, it would be like saying in biological science that a human cloned and gestated by artificial means in some futuristic "vat" is not actually a human because it didn't form the way humans naturally do.

[cripplecreek]

So far I’ve topped 18,000,000 points for 500 years. I put a dwarf star right next to the sun, an earth mass in the habitable zone, and a brown dwarf at the edge of 2 AU.

http://www.stefanom.org/spc/#

[UCANSEE2]

Dwarf star, that’s funny.

[UCANSEE2]

(brown dwarf stars do actually undergo fusion, but their deuterium supply is consumed relatively quickly on a cosmic scale).

(Seriously though, thank you for the response and info)

[mikrofon]

Tyche (or Nemesis’ good sister), is a hypothetical 1 to 4 Jupiter-mass object

So Tyche is just a little "tike" as stars go ....

[SunkenCiv]

Oooh, y’know, I just read that in one of the articles related to this... the indistinct answer to that is, deuterium ignition requires more mass than that.

[SunkenCiv]

;’)

[SunkenCiv]

Nice! Is it back up and running?