Hurtling Star Half The Sun’s Size To Send Comets To Earth – The End Just Like What Killed The Dinosaurs
A huge star, half the size of the sun, is on its course to our solar system and it is set to knock asteroids towards the Earth to spell its doom. The star named Gliese 710 has been studied and experts now know that when it will arrive.
Gliese 710 is moving at a speed of 32,000 mph says Yahoo News and it is 64 light years away. For anyone wondering what a light-year is, a light-year is 5,878,000,000,000 miles. The huge star is half the size of our sun and will reach our planet in 1.35 million years. When Gliese 710 actually arrives, it will be around 77 light-days from the Earth; a light-day is around 26 billion kilometers.
But Gliese 710 won't actually impact the Earth. As it moves through our Solar System, it will move pass the Oort Cloud which is an area with numerous icy objects. The star will cause these objects to shoot towards different areas of the Solar System and several of these could collide the Earth.
A team of researchers from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland said: "Gliese 710 will trigger an observable cometary shower with a mean density of approximately ten comets per year, lasting for three to 4 million years." Their research was based from measurements gathered by the European Space Agency's Gaia space observatory.
Meanwhile, Forbes also reported Gliese 710's arrival saying that it will generate a "large flux of new long-period Oort Cloud comets." Many of these comets will impact the inner part of the solar system. aside from hitting the Earth in a period of 2 million years, some large objects will be swept by the strong gravity of Jupiter while some will simply move repeatedly around the sun.
It is rumored that the impact of these comets on the Earth could be as comparable to what actually killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Still there are some reports that the impact could be very destructive making the dinosaur extinction look like a minor event.
Authors say that Gliese 710's arrival will be the "strongest disrupting encounter in the future and history of the solar system." However, this huge star is just one of the many other stars that could potentially affect the Earth in the next million years within a 3- light year distance.
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