Nemesis is a hypothetical red dwarf [1] or brown dwarf, [2] originally postulated in 1984 [3] to be orbiting the Sun at a distance of about 95,000 AU (1.5 light-years), [2] somewhat beyond the Oort cloud, to explain a perceived cycle of mass extinctions in the geological record, which seem to occur more often at intervals of 26 million years. [2] [4] [ citation needed ] In a 2017 paper, Sarah Sadavoy and Steven Stahler argued that the Sun was probably part of a binary system at the time of its formation, leading them to suggest "there probably was a Nemesis, a long time ago". [5] [6] Such a star would have separated from this binary system over four billion years ago, meaning it could not be responsible for the more recent perceived cycle of mass extinctions. [7]
More recent theories suggest that other forces, like close passage of other stars, or the angular effect of the galactic gravity plane working against the outer solar orbital plane (Shiva Hypothesis), may be the cause of orbital perturbations of some outer Solar System objects. [8] In 2010, researchers found evidence in the fossil record confirming the extinction event periodicity originally identified in 1984, but at a higher confidence level and over a time period nearly twice as long. [9] However, in 2011, researchers analyzed craters on the surface of the Earth and reached the conclusion that the earlier findings were statistical artifacts, and found that the crater record shows no evidence for Nemesis. [10] The Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) failed to discover Nemesis in the 1980s. The 2MASS astronomical survey, which ran from 1997 to 2001, failed to detect an additional star or brown dwarf in the Solar System. [11]
Using newer and more powerful infrared telescope technology able to detect brown dwarfs as cool as 150 kelvins out to a distance of 10 light-years from the Sun, [12] the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE survey) has not detected Nemesis. [13] [14] In 2011, David Morrison, a senior scientist at NASA known for his work in risk assessment of near Earth objects, has written that there is no confidence in the existence of an object like Nemesis, since it should have been detected in infrared sky surveys. [13] [15] [16] [17]
In 1984, paleontologists David Raup and Jack Sepkoski published a paper claiming that they had identified a statistical periodicity in extinction rates over the last 250 million years using various forms of time series analysis. [4] They focused on the extinction intensity of fossil families of marine vertebrates, invertebrates, and protozoans, identifying 12 extinction events over the time period in question. The average time interval between extinction events was determined as 26 million years. At the time, two of the identified extinction events (Cretaceous–Paleogene and Eocene–Oligocene) could be shown to coincide with large impact events. Although Raup and Sepkoski could not identify the cause of their supposed periodicity, they suggested a possible non-terrestrial connection. The challenge to propose a mechanism was quickly addressed by several teams of astronomers. [18] [19]
In 2010, Melott & Bambach re-examined the fossil data, including the now-improved dating, and using a second independent database in addition to that Raup & Sepkoski had used. They found evidence for a signal showing an excess extinction rate with a 27-million-year periodicity, now going back 500 million years, and at a much higher statistical significance than in the older work. [9]
Two teams of astronomers, Daniel P. Whitmire and Albert A. Jackson IV, and Marc Davis, Piet Hut, and Richard A. Muller, independently published similar hypotheses to explain Raup and Sepkoski's extinction periodicity in the same issue of the journal Nature . [18] [19] This hypothesis proposes that the Sun may have an undetected companion star in a highly elliptical orbit that periodically disturbs comets in the Oort cloud, causing a large increase of the number of comets visiting the inner Solar System with a consequential increase of impact events on Earth. This became known as the "Nemesis" or "Death Star" hypothesis.
If it does exist, the exact nature of Nemesis is uncertain. Muller suggests that the most likely object is a red dwarf with an apparent magnitude between 7 and 12, [20] while Daniel P. Whitmire and Albert A. Jackson argue for a brown dwarf. [18] If a red dwarf, it would exist in star catalogs, but it would only be confirmed by measuring its parallax; due to orbiting the Sun it would have a low proper motion and would escape detection by older proper motion surveys that have found stars like the 9th-magnitude Barnard's Star. (The proper motion of Barnard's Star was detected in 1916.) [21] Muller expects Nemesis to be discovered by the time parallax surveys reach the 10th magnitude. [22]
As of 2012 [update] , more than 1800 brown dwarfs have been identified. [23] There are actually fewer brown dwarfs in our cosmic neighborhood than previously thought. Rather than one star for every brown dwarf, there may be as many as six stars for every brown dwarf. [24] The majority of solar-type stars are single. [25] The previous idea stated half or perhaps most stellar systems were binary, triple, or multiple-star systems associated with clusters of stars, rather than the single-star systems that tend to be seen most often.[ citation needed ]
Muller, referring to the date of a recent extinction at 11 million years before the present day, posits that Nemesis has a semi-major axis of about 1.5 light-years (95,000 AU) [20] and suggests it is located (supported by Yarris, 1987) near Hydra, based on a hypothetical orbit derived from original aphelia of a number of atypical long-period comets that describe an orbital arc meeting the specifications of Muller's hypothesis. Richard Muller's most recent paper relevant to the Nemesis theory was published in 2002. [20] In 2002, Muller speculated that Nemesis was perturbed 400 million years ago by a passing star from a circular orbit into an orbit with an eccentricity of 0.7. [22]
In 2010, and again in 2013, Melott & Bambach found evidence for a signal showing an excess extinction rate with a 27-million-year periodicity. However, because Nemesis is so distant from the Sun, it is expected to be subject to perturbations by passing stars, and therefore its orbital period should shift by 15–30%. The existence of a sharp 27-million year peak in extinction events is therefore inconsistent with Nemesis. [9] [26]
The trans-Neptunian object Sedna has an extra-long and unusual elliptical orbit around the Sun, [2] ranging between 76 and 937 AU. Sedna's orbit takes about 11,400 years to complete once. Its discoverer, Michael Brown of Caltech, noted in a Discover magazine article that Sedna's location seemed to defy reasoning: "Sedna shouldn't be there", Brown said. "There's no way to put Sedna where it is. It never comes close enough to be affected by the Sun, but it never goes far enough away from the Sun to be affected by other stars." [27] Brown therefore postulated that a massive unseen object may be responsible for Sedna's anomalous orbit. [2] This line of inquiry eventually led to the hypothesis of Planet Nine.
Brown has stated that it is more likely that one or more non-companion stars, passing near the Sun billions of years ago, could have pulled Sedna out into its current orbit. [27] In 2004, Kenyon forwarded this explanation after analysis of Sedna's orbital data and computer modeling of possible ancient non-companion star passes. [8]
Searches for Nemesis in the infrared are important because cooler stars comparatively shine brighter in infrared light. The University of California's Leuschner Observatory failed to discover Nemesis by 1986. [28] The Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) failed to discover Nemesis in the 1980s. The 2MASS astronomical survey, which ran from 1997 to 2001, failed to detect a star, or brown dwarf, in the Solar System. [2] If Nemesis exists, it may be detected by Pan-STARRS or the planned LSST astronomical surveys.
In particular, if Nemesis is a red dwarf or a brown dwarf, the WISE mission (an infrared sky survey that covered most of the solar neighborhood in movement-verifying parallax measurements) was expected to be able to find it. [2] WISE can detect 150-kelvin brown dwarfs out to 10 light-years, and the closer a brown dwarf is, the easier it is to detect. [12] Preliminary results of the WISE survey were released on April 14, 2011. [29] On March 14, 2012, the entire catalog of the WISE mission was released. [30] In 2014, WISE data ruled out a Saturn or larger-sized body in the Oort cloud out to ten thousand AU. [31]
Calculations in the 1980s suggested that a Nemesis object would have an irregular orbit due to perturbations from the galaxy and passing stars. The Melott and Bambach work [9] shows an extremely regular signal, inconsistent with the expected irregularities in such an orbit. Thus, while supporting the extinction periodicity, it appears to be inconsistent with the Nemesis hypothesis, though of course not inconsistent with other kinds of substellar objects. According to a 2011 NASA news release, "recent scientific analysis no longer supports the idea that extinctions on Earth happen at regular, repeating intervals, and thus, the Nemesis hypothesis is no longer needed." [32]
The Oort cloud, sometimes called the Öpik–Oort cloud, is theorized to be a vast cloud of icy planetesimals surrounding the Sun at distances ranging from 2,000 to 200,000 AU. The concept of such a cloud was proposed in 1950 by the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, in whose honor the idea was named. Oort proposed that the bodies in this cloud replenish and keep constant the number of long-period comets entering the inner Solar System—where they are eventually consumed and destroyed during close approaches to the Sun.
Following the discovery of the planet Neptune in 1846, there was considerable speculation that another planet might exist beyond its orbit. The search began in the mid-19th century and continued at the start of the 20th with Percival Lowell's quest for Planet X. Lowell proposed the Planet X hypothesis to explain apparent discrepancies in the orbits of the giant planets, particularly Uranus and Neptune, speculating that the gravity of a large unseen ninth planet could have perturbed Uranus enough to account for the irregularities.
A trans-Neptunian object (TNO), also written transneptunian object, is any minor planet in the Solar System that orbits the Sun at a greater average distance than Neptune, which has an orbital semi-major axis of 30.1 astronomical units (AU).
Brown dwarfs are substellar objects that have more mass than the biggest gas giant planets, but less than the least massive main-sequence stars. Their mass is approximately 13 to 80 times that of Jupiter (MJ)—not big enough to sustain nuclear fusion of ordinary hydrogen (1H) into helium in their cores, but massive enough to emit some light and heat from the fusion of deuterium (2H). The most massive ones can fuse lithium (7Li).
The Two Micron All-Sky Survey, or 2MASS, was an astronomical survey of the whole sky in infrared light. It took place between 1997 and 2001, in two different locations: at the U.S. Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory on Mount Hopkins, Arizona, and at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, each using a 1.3-meter telescope for the Northern and Southern Hemisphere, respectively. It was conducted in the short-wavelength infrared at three distinct frequency bands near 2 micrometres, from which the photometric survey with its HgCdTe detectors derives its name.
Sedna is a dwarf planet in the outermost reaches of the Solar System, orbiting the Sun beyond the orbit of Neptune. Discovered in 2003, the planetoid's surface is one of the reddest known among Solar System bodies. Spectroscopy has revealed Sedna's surface to be mostly a mixture of the solid ices of water, methane, and nitrogen, along with widespread deposits of reddish-colored tholins, a chemical makeup similar to those of some other trans-Neptunian objects. Within the range of uncertainties, it is tied with the dwarf planet Ceres in the asteroid belt as the largest dwarf planet not known to have a moon. Its diameter is roughly 1,000 km. Owing to its lack of known moons, the Keplerian laws of planetary motion cannot be employed for determining its mass, and the precise figure remains as yet unknown.
The Nibiru cataclysm is a supposed disastrous encounter between Earth and a large planetary object that certain groups believed would take place in the early 21st century. Believers in this doomsday event usually refer to this object as Nibiru or Planet X. The idea was first put forward in 1995 by Nancy Lieder, founder of the website ZetaTalk. Lieder claims she is a contactee with the ability to receive messages from extraterrestrials from the Zeta Reticuli star system through an implant in her brain. She states that she was chosen to warn mankind that the object would sweep through the inner Solar System in May 2003 causing Earth to undergo a physical pole shift that would destroy most of humanity.
Leuschner Observatory, originally called the Students' Observatory, is an observatory jointly operated by the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco State University. The observatory was built in 1886 on the Berkeley campus. For many years, it was directed by Armin Otto Leuschner, for whom the observatory was renamed in 1951. In 1965, it was relocated to its present home in Lafayette, California, approximately 10 miles (16 km) east of the Berkeley campus. In 2012, the physics and astronomy department of San Francisco State University became a partner.
The Shiva hypothesis, also known as coherent catastrophism, is the idea that global natural catastrophes on Earth, such as extinction events, happen at regular intervals because of the periodic motion of the Sun in relation to the Milky Way galaxy.
Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer was a NASA infrared astronomy space telescope in the Explorers Program launched in December 2009. WISE discovered thousands of minor planets and numerous star clusters. Its observations also supported the discovery of the first Y-type brown dwarf and Earth trojan asteroid. WISE performed an all-sky astronomical survey with images in 3.4, 4.6, 12 and 22 μm wavelength range bands, over ten months using a 40 cm (16 in) diameter infrared telescope in Earth orbit.
Any planet is an extremely faint light source compared to its parent star. For example, a star like the Sun is about a billion times as bright as the reflected light from any of the planets orbiting it. In addition to the intrinsic difficulty of detecting such a faint light source, the light from the parent star causes a glare that washes it out. For those reasons, very few of the exoplanets reported as of January 2024 have been observed directly, with even fewer being resolved from their host star.
Detached objects are a dynamical class of minor planets in the outer reaches of the Solar System and belong to the broader family of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). These objects have orbits whose points of closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) are sufficiently distant from the gravitational influence of Neptune that they are only moderately affected by Neptune and the other known planets: This makes them appear to be "detached" from the rest of the Solar System, except for their attraction to the Sun.
Tyche was a hypothetical gas giant located in the Solar System's Oort cloud, first proposed in 1999 by astrophysicists John Matese, Patrick Whitman and Daniel Whitmire of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. They argued that evidence of Tyche's existence could be seen in a supposed bias in the points of origin for long-period comets. More recently, Matese and Whitmire re-evaluated the comet data and noted that Tyche, if it existed, would be detectable in the archive of data that was collected by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope. In 2014, NASA announced that the WISE survey had ruled out any object with Tyche's characteristics, indicating that Tyche as hypothesized by Matese, Whitman, and Whitmire does not exist.
J. Davy Kirkpatrick is an American astronomer at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. Kirkpatrick's research was named one of the top ten science accomplishments of the first ten years (1992–2002) of the W. M. Keck Observatory and one of the Top 100 Stories of 2011 by Discover Magazine.
A sednoid is a trans-Neptunian object with a large semi-major axis and a high perihelion, similar to the orbit of the dwarf planet Sedna. The consensus among astronomers is that there are only three objects that are known from this population: Sedna, 2012 VP113, and 541132 Leleākūhonua (2015 TG387). All three have perihelia greater than 60 AU. These objects lie outside an apparently nearly empty gap in the Solar System and have no significant interaction with the planets. They are usually grouped with the detached objects. Some astronomers consider the sednoids to be Inner Oort Cloud (IOC) objects, though the inner Oort cloud, or Hills cloud, was originally predicted to lie beyond 2,000 AU, beyond the aphelia of the three known sednoids.
WISE 0855−0714 is a sub-brown dwarf 2.28±0.01 parsecs from Earth, therefore the fourth-closest star or (sub-) brown dwarf system to the Sun, the discovery of which was announced in April 2014 by Kevin Luhman using data from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). As of 2014, WISE 0855−0714 has the third-highest proper motion after Barnard's Star and Kapteyn's Star and the fourth-largest parallax of any known star or brown dwarf. It is also the coldest object of its type found in interstellar space, having a temperature of about 285 K.
Planet Nine is a hypothetical ninth planet in the outer region of the Solar System. Its gravitational effects could explain the peculiar clustering of orbits for a group of extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNOs), bodies beyond Neptune that orbit the Sun at distances averaging more than 250 times that of the Earth i.e. over 250 astronomical units (AU). These ETNOs tend to make their closest approaches to the Sun in one sector, and their orbits are similarly tilted. These alignments suggest that an undiscovered planet may be shepherding the orbits of the most distant known Solar System objects. Nonetheless, some astronomers question this conclusion and instead assert that the clustering of the ETNOs' orbits is due to observational biases, resulting from the difficulty of discovering and tracking these objects during much of the year.
K2-33 is an extremely young pre-main-sequence star located about 453 light-years (139 pc) away from the Earth in the constellation of Scorpius. It is known to host one planet, a super-Neptune, named K2-33b. It is also notable for its young age.
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