Passing stars changed the orbits of planets in the solar system

The title is wrong. &quot;Passing Stars Could, and Maybe Have, Changed the Orbits of Planets in the Solar System&#x27;. I guess they are going by the old journalist&#x27;s adage, never let the facts get in the way of a good story.<p>The paper, linked, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;iopscience.iop.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;10.3847&#x2F;2041-8213&#x2F;ad24fb" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;iopscience.iop.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;10.3847&#x2F;2041-8213&#x2F;ad24fb</a>, does go into the chaotic behavior and why it&#x27;s all kinda sorta made up.

Great short article. Takeaway: because of ancient star flybys<p>&quot;the uncertainties of Earth’s past orbit make it difficult to be confident more than 50 million years. And that has a significant impact on paleoclimate studies.&quot;

In university I coded an N-body simulator and visualizer. This was back before when we had so many games that exist now. It taught me a lot about orbital mechanics.<p>One realization I had was how orbits were fragile and how easily you could shift them with influence from very far away.<p>Another realization- gravity is weak, but it decreases over a huge distance compared to other forces we normally experience in human scale.

I often think about how stars come within 1 light year of our Sun every 300,000 years. It&#x27;s pretty wild. And then I have to worry about rogue planets, meteorites, and obfuscated stars going supernova. What are the odds we&#x27;re here?

The picture is misleading. Scholz&#x27;s star is a dwarf and was not visible by the naked eye even at closest approach, unless it happened to flare at the time (and even then would have been like the thousandth brightest object in the sky).<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pas.rochester.edu&#x2F;~emamajek&#x2F;flyby.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pas.rochester.edu&#x2F;~emamajek&#x2F;flyby.html</a>

If you&#x27;re interested in this topic, you might also be interested in the idea that there is a Brown Dwarf hidden near our solar system that causes periodic extinctions on Earth, because it periodically messes up the comet shield provided by the Sun and gas giants.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Nemesis_(hypothetical_star)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Nemesis_(hypothetical_star)</a>

As an interesting related tangent, one of the largest asteroids in the solar system, Juno (~250km diameter), changed its orbit in the 19th century and there is no evidence what caused it.

Talks about an event several dozens of million years ago. Shows a picture of a hominid looking at a star. Keep up the good work!