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Astronomers Acknowledge The Sun’s Evil Twin Exists And Is Heading Our Way

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Astronomers have been on the lookout for the Sun’s ‘evil’ twin ever since the 1980s, when a scientist named Richard Muller theorized about the massive extinction events occurring on earth roughly every 26 million years. Today, researchers seem closer then ever to unraveling this mystery.

Members of the scientific community are well aware of these events, and it’s widely accepted that they were caused by impacting comets and asteroids. These almost regular events, Muller proposed, were caused by none other than the Sun’s twin, dubbed Nemesis after the Greek goddess of divine retribution.
His idea became very controversial across the years, since astronomers have found no trace of the star after decades of sky surveys, that is until now. But, before going into details about the newly acquired evidence, let’s have a look at Muller’s theory.
According to him, there is another star orbiting our sun every 26 million years at a length of 1 to 3 light years from our sun. It may seem very far, but it’s not that much on a galactic scale where the closes known star – Proxima Centauri, is just 4.2 light years away from us.
When Nemesis approaches the sun on its irregular orbit, it disrupts the Ort Cloud – a conglomeration of comets, asteroids and meteors located approximately 1 light year away from the Sun, just at the edge of our solar system. As a result of the collision, these celestial bodies are sent hurtling towards the inner system.
Nemesis is described as a brown dwarf. In other words, it is a failed star, too tiny to sustain nuclear fusion, gassy, dark and hard to spot, but seemingly with an ardent desire to smack everything interfering with its path.
It’s no wonder Muller’s idea was subject to disbelief, since no one was able to spot this rogue star, nor find a similar star to orbit at such a great distance. However, a new mathematical model from UC Berkeley has unveiled just that. Even more, data suggest that almost every star is born with a companion, not excluding our sun.
The team of astronomers at Berkeley have scouted the Perseus Cloud – a stelar fabric approximately 600 light years away, to count the single and binary star systems. A total of 45 single-star systems and 19 binary-star systems were identified.
After analyzing various sets of data, they reached the conclusion that wide binary systems where two stars are further than 500 astronomical units (AU) apart, the stars were younger than 500,000 years. The rest of the stars between 5000,000 and 1 million years, all stood closer, at about 200 AU.
The Perseus cloud appears in the sky as a black spot, since it’s made up of dense gas and dust that blocks light from stars inside and behind it (Credit: FORS Team, 8.2-meter VLT Antu, ESO)
This survey is more than just a coincidence to researchers involved, and believe they have stumbled across a cosmic pattern.
“This has not been seen before or tested, and is super interesting,” notes Sarah Sadavoy, lead author of the study. “We don’t yet know quite what it means, but it isn’t random and must say something about the way wide binaries form.”
Craving for additional answers, the team underwent a series of computer simulations to outline several scenarios. Data showed that all stars with masses compared to that of the Sun come into existence as part of a wide binary system.
With the passing of time, around 60 percent of them break up and arrange into single-star systems, while the others approach and turn into tight binaries.
This being said, although no traces of Nemesis were found so far, the sun is likely to have a wandering evil twin that’s lurking beyond the solar system somewhere within the Milky Way.
“We are saying, yes, there probably was a Nemesis, a long time ago,” said Steven Stahler, co-author of the study.
“We ran a series of statistical models to see if we could account for the relative populations of young single stars and binaries of all separations in the Perseus molecular cloud, and the only model that could reproduce the data was one in which all stars form initially as wide binaries. These systems then either shrink or break apart within a million years.”
With the latest report from last year of disturbed objects hurtling towards the inner solar system, we can expect nemesis to arrive anytime soon, although probably not during our lifetime. But, i guess we’ll never know.
The study is available online, and will soon feature in the monthly notices of the royal astronomical society.
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Former US Air Force fighter pilot: UFOs use Star Trek-style warp drive

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A former US Air Force fighter pilot asserts that he has deciphered
the method behind the extraordinary maneuvers of UFOs, reports dailystar.co.uk.

Over
the past two decades, numerous military encounters with these enigmatic
crafts have been reported, prompting a significant investigation by the
Pentagon.

One of the most renowned sightings occurred during the
USS Nimitz encounter, where fighter pilots witnessed a UFO descending
from 28,000 feet to just above sea level in less than a second.

This
astonishing movement would imply that the craft reached a staggering
speed of 19,000 miles per hour, a velocity that would be fatal to any
human pilot.

According
to Chris Lehto, a former USAF pilot, the craft exhibits two key
characteristics: it moves without inertia, essentially lacking weight,
and it accelerates at an incredibly rapid pace without affecting its
surroundings.

Image: NATO Allied Air Command/Facebook

Chris
believes that the explanation lies within a technology that seems
straight out of science fiction. He proposes that the answer to the UFO
enigma lies in the Alcubierre Drive, a theoretical interstellar engine
conceptualized by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994.

The
Alcubierre Drive employs a form of “space warp” technology, reminiscent
of what has been depicted in episodes of Star Trek. By bending space, a
craft inside a “warp bubble” could potentially travel at or even
surpass the speed of light without violating the known laws of physics.

While
the Alcubierre Drive remains a hypothetical concept with challenges to
overcome, Chris notes that the required energy is no longer believed to
be unattainably large.

Patents
filed with the US patent office outline the potential workings of the
drive, as well as another groundbreaking technology theorized by
American aerospace engineer Salvatore Pais.

Pais suggests that
high-powered rotating magnets could theoretically eliminate an object’s
inertia, and he has filed a patent for a starship based on this
principle.

However, Chris maintains skepticism regarding Pais’
theory. He explains that while Pais’s patent applications for the US
Navy attracted attention for their potential energy-related
applications, doubts have been raised about their feasibility. There is
speculation that they may be scams, pseudoscience, or disinformation
intended to mislead adversaries of the United States.

Alternatively,
rival theories propose that the “Tic Tac” UFO is a classified Pentagon
project testing similar advanced technologies discussed by Chris.

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A Mysterious Earth-Like Planet Has Just Appeared in Our Solar System, Scientists Say

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Scientists say they have found evidence of a new Earth-like
planet that has suddenly appeared in our Solar System and is orbiting
the Sun.

Physicists, including those from the National Astronomical Observatory
of Japan, said the planet is likely to be the mysterious ‘Planet Nine’
that was hypothesised to exist in the far outer edges of the Solar
System.

Several studies in the past have suggested there is likely an
undiscovered planet beyond the Kuiper Belt – a stellar disk of materials
such as asteroids, space rocks, comets around the Sun in the outer
Solar System past the orbit of Neptune.

Independent.co.uk reports: In the new research, published recently in The Astronomical Journal, scientists
found that some of the objects in the Kuiper Belt behave in a way
indicative of the presence of a small planet among them.

One such object, they said, is about 500 astronomical units (AU) from
the Sun, where 1 AU is the distance between the Sun and the Earth.

In comparison Neptune is at a distance of 30 AUs from the Sun.

Some of these were also found to have “odd” orbits suggesting they
are being pull by the gravity of a cosmic entity larger than those that
typically influence such objects.

Computer simulations run by the scientists indicate that the most
likely explanation for the observations was another hidden planet in the
Kuiper Belt.

“We predict the existence of an Earth-like planet,” researchers wrote in the study.

“It is plausible that a primordial planetary body could survive in
the distant Kuiper Belt as a Kuiper Belt planet (KBP), as many such
bodies existed in the early solar system,” they added.

If such a planet exists, researchers say it would have a mass about
1.5 to 3 times that of Earth with an inclination of about 30 degrees.

They say the theorised planet’s orbit would likely place it between 250 and 500 AU from the Sun.

Researchers say the discovery of such a planet close to the Kuiper
Belt can unravel new constraints on planet formation and evolution.

“In conclusion, the results of the KBP scenario support the existence
of a yet-undiscovered planet in the far outer solar system,” scientists
noted.

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