When I saw this article, even before I read it, I thought, “This is as good an explanation for the Kuiper Belt, as Planet 9.”
After reading the article, I find the simulations the authors have done pretty convincing. This is not absolute proof, but it does open another convincing possibility for the evolution and structure of the Solar System.
For a long time, I have been thinking it is a little hard to believe that there hasn’t been a relatively close stellar flyby of our Solar System. There are a large number of stars in the Milky Way, and our Sun has been wandering outside of any clusters for billions of years.
A flyby at ~110 AU, less than the distances to the Voyager Spacecrafts, is like a 9-ring bullet hole through our solar system. a 10-ring bullseye, passing inside, say, Jupiter’s orbit, would have destroyed life on Earth and every other possible planet by its disruption.
1 Comment
When I saw this article, even before I read it, I thought, “This is as good an explanation for the Kuiper Belt, as Planet 9.”
After reading the article, I find the simulations the authors have done pretty convincing. This is not absolute proof, but it does open another convincing possibility for the evolution and structure of the Solar System.
For a long time, I have been thinking it is a little hard to believe that there hasn’t been a relatively close stellar flyby of our Solar System. There are a large number of stars in the Milky Way, and our Sun has been wandering outside of any clusters for billions of years.
A flyby at ~110 AU, less than the distances to the Voyager Spacecrafts, is like a 9-ring bullet hole through our solar system. a 10-ring bullseye, passing inside, say, Jupiter’s orbit, would have destroyed life on Earth and every other possible planet by its disruption.