WASHINGTON: There’s a fleet of “Death Stars” headed our way. This time, ruin actually could rain down upon us all. But there’s still time to linger over a “Star Wars” sequel or three (hundred thousand).
The wayward orange dwarf star HIP-85605 is just one of several stars detected as being on an intercept course with our solar system. Odds are as high as 90 percent that it will crash into our Oort cloud — an enormous “bubble” of comets that surrounds our sun — sometime between 240,000 and 470,000 years from now.
And it’s not the only one: There are possibly more than a dozen such “Death Stars” racing our way.
A paper to be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics by astrophysicist Coryn Bailer-Jones of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Astronomy reveals that there are 14 wandering stars that will pass within 3 light-years of Earth.HIP-85605 appears likely to become our closest encounter.
It is a cool K-class dwarf star currently 16 light-years away, approaching from the direction of the Hercules constellation. It will likely skim past our solar system at a mere 0.13 to 0.65 light-years (roughly 8,000 times the distance between the Earth and the sun).
Another seems close behind. The star designated Gliese 710 has been calculated as having a 90 percent chance of coming within our sphere of influence. Currently lurking some 64 light-years away in the Serpens constellation, it’s expected to land in our neighborhood sometime between 1.3 million and 1.5 million years from now.
To put this in perspective: Our closest neighboring star is Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf some 4 light-years away.
Tesla driverless system to use updated radar technology
WASHINGTON: Electric carmaker Tesla announced Sunday it was upgrading its Autopilot software to use more advanced radar technology. In a...
