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Weren't humans alive back 70,000 years ? I wonder if one of our ancestor then gazed at the sky and saw something or not. Guess we will never know :(

by 1971genocide 12y ago

antognini 12y ago
The authors actually discuss this possibility in their paper. (Section 4 of [1].) The star is very faint (an M dwarf), so even at its nearest approach it would have been far too faint to be seen with the naked eye. However, M dwarfs do show occasional flares, so it is possible that it would have brightened to be visible to the naked eye for a few minutes to hours during a flare event. [1]: http://arxiv.org/abs/1502.04655 http://arxiv.org/abs/1502.04655
scrumper 12y ago
Possibly a fairly dim point of light, moving slowly like a planet? It was a red dwarf star (with a brown dwarf companion) so not that bright in the first place, and very, very, very far away - that perspective diagram has a log scale. The sun seen from the outer planets isn't much more than a particularly bright star, and it's much bigger and hotter than Scholz's star.
lkbm 12y ago
Yes, I believe modern humans came about around 200 000 years ago, and around 70 000 years ago were heading out of Africa.
- ddeck 12y ago
  Not sure why you're being down voted without comment since you directly answered the parents question with broadly accurate information: Anatomically modern humans first appear in the fossil record in Africa about 195,000 years ago (see Omo remains), and studies of molecular biology give evidence that the approximate time of divergence from the common ancestor of all modern human populations was 200,000 years [1] Migration out of Africa is estimated at around 125000 years ago for modern humans. [2] [1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens [2] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_human_migrations http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_human_migrations

Weren't humans alive back 70,000 years ? I wonder if one of our ancestor then gazed at the sky and saw something or not. Guess we will never know :(

antognini 12y ago

The authors actually discuss this possibility in their paper. (Section 4 of [1].) The star is very faint (an M dwarf), so even at its nearest approach it would have been far too faint to be seen with the naked eye. However, M dwarfs do show occasional flares, so it is possible that it would have brightened to be visible to the naked eye for a few minutes to hours during a flare event. [1]: http://arxiv.org/abs/1502.04655 http://arxiv.org/abs/1502.04655

scrumper 12y ago

Possibly a fairly dim point of light, moving slowly like a planet? It was a red dwarf star (with a brown dwarf companion) so not that bright in the first place, and very, very, very far away - that perspective diagram has a log scale. The sun seen from the outer planets isn't much more than a particularly bright star, and it's much bigger and hotter than Scholz's star.

lkbm 12y ago

Yes, I believe modern humans came about around 200 000 years ago, and around 70 000 years ago were heading out of Africa.

ddeck 12y ago
Not sure why you're being down voted without comment since you directly answered the parents question with broadly accurate information: Anatomically modern humans first appear in the fossil record in Africa about 195,000 years ago (see Omo remains), and studies of molecular biology give evidence that the approximate time of divergence from the common ancestor of all modern human populations was 200,000 years [1] Migration out of Africa is estimated at around 125000 years ago for modern humans. [2] [1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens [2] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_human_migrations http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_human_migrations