Posted on 02/18/2015 1:11:46 PM PST by BenLurkin
Highlighted by astronomers at the University of Rochester and the European Southern Observatory, the star nicknamed Scholzs star has a very low tangential velocity in the sky, but it has been clocked traveling at a breakneck speed away from us.
In other words, from our perspective, Scholzs star is fleeing the scene of a collision with us.
Most stars this nearby show much larger tangential motion, said Eric Mamajek, of the University of Rochester. The small tangential motion and proximity initially indicated that the star was most likely either moving towards a future close encounter with the solar system, or it had recently come close to the solar system and was moving away. Sure enough, the radial velocity measurements were consistent with it running away from the Suns vicinity and we realized it must have had a close flyby in the past.
...
Using data from the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) and the Magellan telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, Mamajek and his collaborators were able to measure the stars spectra and radial velocity. Through these observations they were able to deduce that Scholzs star is a dim red dwarf approximately 20 light-years away. It is actually part of a binary system, with its partner being a small brown dwarf (or a failed star).
Taking these data, the researchers were able to model several different orbital possibilities and deduce that the star almost definitely (to a 98 percent certainty) came within 0.8 light years from the sun. Although this is still quite a margin, the star would have careened though the Oort Cloud a hypothetical region filled with frozen cometary nuclei surrounding the solar system.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
Marx and Engles
I am sure the author intended a racist and possibly anti-small people insinuation there...............
That's a "gravitationally challenged" for those in Rio Linda.
As best as I can figure, it passed through at only around 175,000 mph, so should have been a “big show” for many, many years.
Gary Coleman was a small brown dwarf as well as a failed star....
Even though a dying red dwarf wouldn’t be very bright in the sky it’s gravity should certainly be strong enough to have influence on the solar system.
I would say that ‘blew past’ is more descriptive.
One light year = 5.8 TRILLION MILES
One light year = 63241 AU’s
This thing allegedly came within .8 light year.
That is a little over 50,000 times the distance from the Sun to the Earth.
"Of possible interest" -- greatest understatement of the decade, I believe! Thanks BenLurkin!
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"Of possible interest" -- greatest understatement of the decade, I believe! Thanks BenLurkin!
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it’s VENUS that has the runaway Global Warming that Earth is doomed to repeat unless we all drive Chevy Volts.
The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes:
Flood, Fire, and Famine
in the History of Civilization
by Richard Firestone,
Allen West, and
Simon Warwick-Smith
However it happened, it was clearly Bush's fault.
Some clear night soon, go outside and look up. Count the stars.
What you see CANNOT be farther away than the age of the universe, because the light from something cannot take longer to travel from there to here than the universe is old.
That means EVERY STAR must be no more than 10,000 (or whatever age-of-the-universe you claim) light-years away.
Apply what we objectively KNOW about how the universe works (gravity, electromagnetic fields, mechanical physics, etc - all within at least a certain range of absolute certainty).
The result is: the universe we see CANNOT FIT in a 10,000 year old universe.
Remember, 10,000 years is just 100 hundred-year lifespans back-to-back. That ain’t much.
The only “solution” you could provide is “well, God created the light from those stars already traveling toward us” and “God created fossils that _look_ millions of years old to test our faith”.
I reject that, as that would require God lie - creating an illusion of what is when it absolutely isn’t.
Well, “through our solar system” was some 0.8 light-years from the Sun. That’s pretty far, and it was a pretty small star. Enough to cause some disruptions, but not tear everything apart.
Late Pleostocene Human Population Bottlenecks. . . (Toba)
Actually, according to the Bible, light was created before the sun, moon and stars.
However, as for the age of the universe, I defer to science which gives a range that is constantly changing as our methods and understanding grow. There is more to life than we can conceive and humility is lacking on both “sides” of the debate.
The Bible was never meant as a definitive science text, and modern science has become as hide-bound as their caricature of the medieval Catholic Church.
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