MEXICO: Recent revelations that our corner of the galaxy was visited by an alien star in the distant past have once more raised questions about our own solar system, rekindling suggestions that another Earth-sized planet could lie hidden on the opposite side of the Sun, or that an unknown companion star could be orbiting beyond our view.
Last week, it was announced that researchers have discovered that a Red Dwarf star, accompanied by a smaller Brown Dwarf, passed through the edge of our solar system just 70,000 years ago. Named Scholz’s Star, after its German discoverer Ralf-Dieter Scholz, the alien visitor reached a point 0.8 light years distant from our sun, moving through the Oort Cloud that surrounds our system.
The discovery seemed at first to validate a theory posited in 1984 by Richard Muller of the University of California Berkley that a companion star, called Nemesis, might orbit the Sun at a great distance, responsible for mass extinctions on Earth that occur more frequently every 27 million years. If a companion star or rogue planet were to pass through the Oort Cloud at those intervals, some scientists assert that they could be responsible for sending a volley of comets towards the Sun, accounting for a rise in impact rates on our planet, and therefore extinctions.
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