Star Buzzed Earth During Neanderthal Times

[MattSh]

Seventy thousand years ago, when modern humans were on the verge of migrating from Africa and before Neanderthals died out, an alien star flew through the outer reaches of the solar system.

Passing less than a light-year from Earth, the flyby was the closest stellar near-miss identified so far, scientists reported Tuesday in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Ordinarily too dim for human eyes to perceive, the small red dwarf may have flared up during its extremely close brush with Earth, making it visible to early humans if they chanced to look skyward at the right moment.

When scientists reconstructed the past orbit of the star, known as Scholz's star, they found that it once came within 0.8 light-years (roughly eight trillion kilometers) of Earth's solar system. That distance puts it within the outer reaches of the Oort cloud, a vast, faraway realm populated by trillions of comets.

Complete story at - http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/02/150218-star-close-encounter-scholz-space/


In this illustration, Scholz's star and its brown dwarf companion (foreground) fly by our solar system 70,000 years ago. The sun (left, background) would have appeared as a brilliant star. The pair is now about 20 light-years away.

ILLUSTRATION BY MICHAEL OSADCIW, UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER

[Romeo.lima333]

1. will it be coming back?

[Fumesucker]

2. Short answer, no..

Long answer, it's moving rapidly away from us but not moving fast side to side in our view, that's what clued the astronomers in to start with.

It's like when a car passes you at high speed on the highway, it's moving fast but it stays in about the same spot in your windshield after it gets in front of you and quickly gets smaller off in the distance.

[Ichingcarpenter]

3. Human Beings Almost Vanished From Earth In 70,000 B.C.

The Toba catastrophe theory as presented in the late 1990s to early 2000s suggested that a bottleneck of the human population occurred 70,000 years ago, proposing that the human population was reduced to perhaps 10,000 individuals when the Toba supervolcano in Indonesia erupted and triggered a major environmental change.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck#Humans

interesting correlation?

[MattSh]

5. Things that make you go Hmmmm... nt

[bemildred]

6. Indeed. nt

[daredtowork]

4. Worlds in Collision!

Remember the old Velikovsky book that examined the Bible and various ancient myths for the idea that Mars(?) had approached very near to Earth - and the psychological trauma of this event and all the associated geoshocks and storms was carried forth in story song throughout the ages?

What if there was indeed a "memory" of this "disaster" was actually the approach of this star in prehistoric times?

[Nye Bevan]

7. Nice that there was something to entertain them in the days before TV (nt)