© ESOArtist’s impression of Gliese 710, a sun-like star that will travel through our Solar System’s Oort Cloud in about 1.3 million years.
For years, scientists have known that Gliese 710 will come excruciatingly close to our Solar System in about a million years.
An updated analysis suggests this star will come considerably closer than we thought, during which time it's expected to spawn dangerous cometary swarms.Gliese 710 is currently 64 light-years from Earth, but for all intents and purposes, it's heading straight for us. A new
study published in the journal
Astronomy and Physics projects the close encounter will happen about 1.35 million years from now, and that the star will come within 13,365 AU of our sun (where 1 AU is equal to the average distance of the Earth to the sun), or 1.2 trillion miles. At that distance, it would take light 77 days to reach the Earth.
That's obviously far, but not in cosmological terms. That distance is well within the Solar System's Oort Cloud—a large bubble of ice and rock that surrounds the sun to a distance as far as 50,000 to 200,000 AU. So while Gliese 710 is sure to avoid a direct hit with any object in the inner Solar System, it'll likely travel through the Oort Cloud. And with its tremendous gravitational influence (it's about 60 percent the size of our sun), it'll perturb the many large rocks currently sitting idle way out there in the outer reaches. This star is poised to send a shower of comets into the inner Solar System, possibly causing a serious impact event with Earth.
Comment: The American Meteor Society (AMS) received over 110 reports about a fireball seen over IL, MI, IN, Ontario and KY on Monday, December 26th 2016 around 22:52 UT.