It happened long before the real “Mr. Natural” stepped into our lives in the 1960s.
A no-name star, perhaps now disappeared over some cosmic horizon, passed through the solar neighborhood and shook things up.
Maybe.
A Space.com article by Meghan Bartels reports on a recent paper published on arXiv.org in which a team of astronomers writes on the possibility of this now long gone star pulling on the early outer solar system and shifting orbits so they are way out of the solar ecliptic plane. The team of astronomers used computer models to study the possibility of the extra-solar visitor – which I am calling Mr. Natural – and the possible results of its passing. Such a pass could have pulled the trans-Neptunian objects (NTO) of the solar system into the eccentric orbits that we can observe today.
Being outside and enjoying what our world offers includes looking up at the night sky. If while looking up at the night sky, we could see the solar system objects that reside beyond Neptune we would see that their orbits are wildly eccentric when compared to the orbits of planets like Earth and Mars. In contrast to our earthly, tight, elliptical orbit of the sun, the orbits for those NTOs are long, stretched-out ellipses. For example, Sedna, which is mentioned in the Space.com article, is a dwarf planet beyond what we would generally consider the edge of our solar system. Its orbit of the sun takes 10,000 years. The closest it gets to the sun is further than 7 billion miles away from the sun. That’s more than 75 times greater than the Earth’s average closest approach to the sun of 93 million miles. Something likely gave Sedna and the other outer solar system objects quite a tug of gravity a long time ago. According to the arXiv.org paper this might have happened as early as 10 million years after the formation of the solar system – which is presumed to be 5 billion years old. So that passing star came and went a long time before the creation of life and a long, long time before even the oldest dinosaur.
The creation of the universe – and of the Earth – and all the life that teems on this Earth is worth considering. When I look at the blossom of a tiny wildflower I can think of its place and my own place in the universe. The flower and I are small parts of the greater cosmos. And we can benefit each other, each giving according to its ability. The flower gives beauty. It accents an open meadow or a shaded woodland glen. It may give nectar to a bird or bee, or be food for the rabbit or the browsing deer. I can see and understand this flower’s part in the greater scheme of life. And for my part, I can be a steward of the flower, and of the meadow, and of the woodland glen. I can respond with joy to the beauty and worth of the flower as well as that of all creation, from this tiny blossom, to the solar system, and to the vast cosmos beyond.
And to Mr. Natural – the presumed passing star of millennia ago – I say “Keep on trucking!”
associated picture is from “Outer solar system possibly shaped by a stellar fly-by”, arXiv.org, S. Pfalzner, et.al., posted July 9, 2018.
Source: https://www.space.com/41212-wandering-star-disturbed-outer-solar-system.html