Comets are the icy remnants left over from the formation of the Solar System. They circle the Sun in highly elliptical orbits that can range in length from several years to several million years, depending on their origin, and while they are usually quiet and dark when they get close enough to the Sun they…
Tag: oort cloud
Our Five-Trillion-Mile Close Call: the Star(s) That Skimmed the Solar System
It’s like something out of a Hollywood film or a science fiction novel: a dark star sneaks up on Earth from just outside the Solar System, discovered too late to do anything about it (and really, what could we do?) and plows through the cloud of comets that surrounds the Sun like a haze of icy gnats, sending them flying…
Tyche: Have We Marked the Spot of Planet X?
There’s been a lot of buzz lately about the existence of a “new” planet in our solar system, a gas giant that has eluded discovery by astronomers thus far because of its purported incredibly distant orbit – over 350 times farther from the Sun than Pluto, or a whopping 15,000 times farther from the Sun…
