Theres a fleet of ‘Death Stars’ headed our way. This time destruction really could be rained down upon us all: But there’s still time to linger over a Star Wars sequel or three (hundred thousand). The wayward orange dwarf star HIP-85605 is just one of several stars detected as being on an intercept course with our solar system. Odds are as high as 90 per cent it will crash into our Oort cloud — an enormous ‘bubble’ of comets that surrounds our Sun — sometime between 240,000 and 470,000 years from now. And it’s not the only one: There are possibly more than a dozen such ‘Death Stars’ racing our way. A paper to be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics by astrophysicist Coryn Bailer-Jones of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Astronomy reveals that there are 14 wandering stars that will pass within three light years of Earth. HIP-85605 appears likely to become our closest encounter.
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 00:29:55 +0000