It's called Gliese 710 and it's currently more than 60 light years away. But it's moving directly towards us and should be here in about 1.3 million years.
Apparently that's been known for some time, but new calculations indicate that it will pass much closer to the Sun than thought, less than 0.2 light years (77 light-days) distant at closest approach. That's far enough away that it isn't a threat to hit the Earth and whatever life is living here in that distant day, but it might seriously destabilize the Oort Cloud and send many comets and whatever other small bodies are out there into the inner solar system. Some of these might potentially collide with Earth in a mass-extinction event.
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/12/incomi...s-our-sun/
(Dec 23, 2016 07:13 PM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]It's called Gliese 710 and it's currently more than 60 light years away. But it's moving directly towards us and should be here in about 1.3 million years.
Apparently that's been known for some time, but new calculations indicate that it will pass much closer to the Sun than thought, less than 0.2 light years (77 light-days) distant at closest approach. That's far enough away that it isn't a threat to hit the Earth and whatever life is living here in that distant day, but it might seriously destabilize the Oort Cloud and send many comets and whatever other small bodies are out there into the inner solar system. Some of these might potentially collide with Earth in a mass-extinction event.
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/12/incomi...s-our-sun/
How do we know the star is heading towards the Sun and not vice versa?
(Dec 24, 2016 05:59 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: [ -> ]How do we know the star is heading towards the Sun and not vice versa?
Dunno.
Each of us would seem to be approaching the other I guess, judging from our local star's frame-of-reference. I don't know which star has more movement when viewed from the collective reference frame of some set of the nearest stars, which are probably moving relative to each other as well.
At any rate, the distance between the Sun and Gliese 710 is shrinking, at a rate where our distance apart reaches a minimum in about 1.3 million years. (I'm not staying up to see it.)
I wonder how bright Gliese 710 is. Probably a red-dwarf, since most stars in this part of the Milky Way are. If it's only 0.2 lys away, it will probably be pretty bright in the future-Earth's sky.
Apparently Gliese 710 is a main-sequence star about 60% the mass of our Sun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_710
They say that at closest approach it should look like a bright planet, like Venus perhaps. (Less spectacular than I'd anticipated.)
The spectacular stuff might be the purturbation of the Oort Cloud. That might potentially send lots of material into the inner solar system for an extended period, generating maybe 10 visible comets a year in the sky. If one of them collides with the Earth, it could be an extinction-level event.
Now I'm wondering if Gliese 710 has any exoplanets. If it is only 0.2 light years away for some period, it might be possible for the Earth's far future residents (they probably won't be human) to launch a spacecraft to their system.
Quote:should be here in about 1.3 million years.
We'll be long gone by then, surfing thru wormholes to other galaxies and powering our crystalline cyborg starbodies with black hole plasma..