“it received an unexpected gravitational kick, probably from a star passing by the outer edges of the solar system.”
Interesting. I wonder what star this might be? The Oort cloud is about .79 light years from the sun. Proxima Centauri is 4.2 light years from our sun.
Here is a list of the nearest stars to our solar system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars_and_brown_dwarfs
Many things become believable if you decide that pure energy plus mind-bending amounts of time equals people.
Against that backdrop, what’s odd that we wouldn’t notice an interloping star swinging by to punt a comet toward jolly ol’ Sol?
An object in motion tends to stay in motion.
An object at rest tends to remain at rest.
The comet is in motion now.
Either it has been in motion for a very long time,
OR it was set in motion by another moving object we didn’t notice.
A star, though???
How long ago, and how would such a substantial thing have escaped notice?
Wouldn’t it be better — more honest — for astronomers to simply admit, “We have a couple of vague ideas, but we don’t actually know when or how this comet was set in motion”?
What would be wrong with just saying so plainly?
I swear, the words “I don’t know” are like Kryptonite in the world of science; corner some scientific prognosticator into having to utter them, and they hiss and spit, and shrink into a fetal ball like Gollum warding off an elven rope.
Something called “Scholz’s star” apparently passed through the Oort Cloud some 70,000 years ago, presumably kicking up a bunch of fuss among potential comets (which take a long time to make it to our neighborhood). Don’t know if this one was part of that encounter, or whether it’s associated with something that happened even farther back.
I ran to get my 3D glasses to view the animation on Wikipedia, but they were the ones from the movies…
It’s got to be one of the close stars, but how long ago?
Interesting. I wonder what star this might be?
—
Perhaps the suspected dark companion Sun?