Massive dark object 'lurking on edge of solar system hurling comets at Earth'

[highconscienceness]

A massive dark object may be lurking on the edge of our solar system, according to scientists.

Most comets that fly into the inner solar system seem to come from the outer region of the Oort cloud - a region of icy dust and debris left over from the birth of the solar system.

The cloud starts from a point about 93 billion miles from the Sun and stretches for around three light years and contains billions of comets, most of them small and hidden.

NASA illustration.

Now new calculations suggest a large object that is up to four times as big as Jupiter could be responsible for sending them in our direction.

The scientists have analysed the comets in the Oort cloud and deduced that 25 per-cent of them would need a nudge by a body of at least Jupiter size before they changed orbit.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...solar-hurling-comets-Earth.html#ixzz17gz4D8uq

 

[(JJ)]

three of my hours this semester are coming from an astronomy class... and this sh1t is exactly why! i find it to be tauntingly interesting how little we actually know about our universe, and how intricate the theories of everything are.

i think this theoretical thing that they're referring to could be something known as a brown dwarf, which is essentially a star that never got on its game enough to begin fusing elements, and igniting.


or from my research on the end of the world theories, it could be nbiru, the planet that the aliens that pushed human evolution along come from...

never know...

 

[highconscienceness]

Nah, nibiru is an x-planet that orbits closer and away from Earth. That thing has a different orbit. I highly doubt it's a star though, because stars would have things orbiting them, like asteroids or planets. I believe it has something to do with dark matter or a large body of asteroids clumped together.

 

[Rogue]

Back on October 27, 1997, astronomer Dr. Phil Plaitt (author of Death From The Skies! and now has his own television show on the Discovery Channel called Phil Plaitt's Bad Universe), wrote in his "Bitesize Tour of the Solar System":

After many weeks, our tour of the solar system has finally come to an end. As we pass through the Kuiper Belt and Oort cloud, we have left the realm of the observable solar system. Is there anything else that lies beyond the frigid shell of comets? No one knows. There have been theories that the Sun has an invisible companion, named Nemesis, on a 26 million year orbit. It was proposed to explain periodic mass extinctions seen in the fossil record. As the theory goes, the eccentric orbit of Nemesis dips it into the Oort cloud every 26 million years, sending a shower of comets to rain down on the Earth, wiping out the majority of life on the planet. Is this theory correct? Well, no one has ever seen Nemesis, nor is there any evidence of it. Even the periodicity of mass extinctions in the fossil record is suspect.

Nothing has really changed.

The Daily Mail cites a paper written by John J. Matese and Daniel P. Whitmire of the University of Louisana. The paper was mathematical recalculations rather than new observational evidence. I pulled the paper up on Google Scholar; the paper stated it was submitted to the journal ICARUS in April and I found no evidence it was actually published, which highly suggests the paper failed the peer-review process, presenting very good grounds to remain skeptical of the paper's mathematics.

(Correction: It does appear the paper has been accepted for publication. Still, though, there are grounds for skepticism.)