Scientists have confirmed that a foreign star passed through our solar system 70,000 years ago and it is believed to be the closest such encounter ever observed.
According to BBC News, authors of a study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters called the object a red dwarf and named it Scholz's star. The alien object passed through the Oort Cloud, which sits in the solar system's outer reaches.
"Most stars this nearby show much larger tangential motion," study lead author Eric Mamajek, associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester, said in a press release. "The small tangential motion and proximity initially indicated that the star was most likely either moving towards a future close encounter with the solar system, or it had 'recently' come close to the solar system and was moving away. Sure enough, the radial velocity measurements were consistent with it running away from the Sun's vicinity - and we realized it must have had a close flyby in the past."
The team of researchers said the encounter was five times closer than the previous record holder, Proxima Centauri. Scholz was about 0.8 light years from our sun at the closest, whereas Proxima Centauri came to within 4.2 light years.
"There are trillions of comets in the Oort cloud and likely some of them were perturbed by this object," Mamajek told BBC News. "But so far it seems unlikely that this star actually triggered a significant 'comet shower.
"So it is a bit of a strange coincidence that we happen to have caught one that passed so close within the past 100,000 years or so."
