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It can't have had sufficiently fast impact on Earth by disturbing orbits to create impactors, given the distance.

by eleitl 9y ago

JoeAltmaier 9y ago
Isn't the article mostly about how it did influence Oort cloud object orbits? Thirty-six identified.
- stult 9y ago
  It also discusses how there was almost certainly no impact on Earth's surface or our ancestors. Apparently the star was unlikely to even have been visible in the night sky.
  - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
    ...except for the potential Oort object impacts? I'm not sure they discounted that. And further: we can't track the objects that did impact something because, well, they're gone now. Statistics doesn't work well for them.
- chasing 9y ago
  That's a minuscule number and "influenced" doesn't necessarily mean "aimed them at the Earth." There's a lot of space out there which it takes things a lot of time to move through. It takes the Earth a year to go around the Sun. And the Oort Cloud is, like, 100,000 times further away from the Sun than we are.
  - Raphmedia 9y ago
    Even if you ignore possible asteroid impacts, there's no telling what kind of issues having red dwarf star & its brown dwarf companion so close can create.
  - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
    They went into 'v' orbits, which as I understand it, means steep highly elliptical orbits that come inside the Earth's orbit? Its a lot more crowded in here.
    - chasing 9y ago
      I'm no space science maker person. So take this all with a grain of salt. But. Halley's Comet takes 75 years to make an orbit. It goes out to about 35AU. Let's call that 1 year per AU. That rough, rough number would lead one to conclude that anything from the Oort Cloud moving at a similar speed could take, say, 100,000 years to get here even if it was aimed at us. If triggered by something 70,000 years ago, we'd still have a bunch of millenia to prepare. Anyway. I'm sure I'm completely wrong.
drak0n1c 9y ago
There doesn't need to be any physical impactors for there to be a significant effect on climate and life. Ice ages can start and end due to tiny changes in the Earth's orbital wobble. https://phys.org/news/2016-12-ice-ages-linked-earth-orbitbut.html https://phys.org/news/2016-12-ice-ages-linked-earth-orbitbut...

It can't have had sufficiently fast impact on Earth by disturbing orbits to create impactors, given the distance.

by eleitl 9y ago

It can't have had sufficiently fast impact on Earth by disturbing orbits to create impactors, given the distance.

JoeAltmaier 9y ago

Isn't the article mostly about how it did influence Oort cloud object orbits? Thirty-six identified.

stult 9y ago
It also discusses how there was almost certainly no impact on Earth's surface or our ancestors. Apparently the star was unlikely to even have been visible in the night sky.
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  ...except for the potential Oort object impacts? I'm not sure they discounted that. And further: we can't track the objects that did impact something because, well, they're gone now. Statistics doesn't work well for them.
chasing 9y ago
That's a minuscule number and "influenced" doesn't necessarily mean "aimed them at the Earth." There's a lot of space out there which it takes things a lot of time to move through. It takes the Earth a year to go around the Sun. And the Oort Cloud is, like, 100,000 times further away from the Sun than we are.
- Raphmedia 9y ago
  Even if you ignore possible asteroid impacts, there's no telling what kind of issues having red dwarf star & its brown dwarf companion so close can create.
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  They went into 'v' orbits, which as I understand it, means steep highly elliptical orbits that come inside the Earth's orbit? Its a lot more crowded in here.
  - chasing 9y ago
    I'm no space science maker person. So take this all with a grain of salt. But. Halley's Comet takes 75 years to make an orbit. It goes out to about 35AU. Let's call that 1 year per AU. That rough, rough number would lead one to conclude that anything from the Oort Cloud moving at a similar speed could take, say, 100,000 years to get here even if it was aimed at us. If triggered by something 70,000 years ago, we'd still have a bunch of millenia to prepare. Anyway. I'm sure I'm completely wrong.

drak0n1c 9y ago

There doesn't need to be any physical impactors for there to be a significant effect on climate and life. Ice ages can start and end due to tiny changes in the Earth's orbital wobble. https://phys.org/news/2016-12-ice-ages-linked-earth-orbitbut.html https://phys.org/news/2016-12-ice-ages-linked-earth-orbitbut...