Billions of years ago, our Solar System might have experienced a dramatic encounter with a passing star, coming within 110 astronomical units (AU) of the Sun, closer than the Voyager 1 probe is to Earth today. This event, detailed in recent studies published in Nature Astronomy and The Astrophysical Journal Letters, could shed light on the mysterious orbits of trans-Neptunian objects and some of the Solar System’s irregular moons. Researchers, including lead author Susanne Pfalzner and co-author Amith Govind from Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany, utilized over 3,000 computer simulations to explore this hypothesis. Their findings suggest that the gravitational influence of a star slightly lighter than the Sun, passing less than four times the distance of Neptune from the Sun, could account for the eccentric and inclined orbits of these distant celestial bodies, including the dwarf planet Sedna and retrograde moons like Saturn’s Phoebe. This stellar flyby might explain why the outer planets have moons of two distinct types, potentially identifying a significant, previously overlooked event in the history of our Solar System.
Read more at Futurism…
