We're about to be buzzed by another star

blacbird said:

In about a million years, another star is on course to give our solar system a passing kiss:

http://earth-chronicles.com/space/the-solar-system-is-approaching-a-death-star.html

The nearest star to us now is about 4.3 light years away. At closest pass, this thing could be as close as 40 light-days away. Now, it's our job, as a human species, to still be around then to witness it.

caw

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Forbes said:

New data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia mission has given astronomers unprecedented accuracy in predicting that Gliese 710, a K-spectral type star a little more than half the size of our Sun, will cross into our solar system’s Oort Cloud of comets some 1.35 million years from now.

According to a paper recently published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, Gliese 710 will swipe through a swath of the Oort Cloud’s estimated few trillion comets, which in turn circle our solar system at distances of up to a light year.

The co-authors, Filip Berski and Piotr Dybczński, write that their calculations indicate that Gliese 710, currently estimated to be some 64 light years away in the constellation of Serpens, will have the strongest influence on the Oort Cloud objects in the next 10 million years. They note that their calculations also indicate that Gliese 710 will pass 13,365 astronomical units (or Earth-Sun distances) from the Sun

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But is this really the star that will make the closest and quickest approach to our solar system?

Van Leeuwen, however, cautions that there are still many faint red dwarf stars whose exact trajectories and movements across the sky that still remain very much unknown.

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