Tuesday, June 17, 2025

Have Stellar Flybys Altered Earth's Climate in the Past?

This illustrations shows Scholz's star, a binary star that performed a stellar flyby of our Solar System about 70,000 years ago. The Sun is the small star in the upper left. There have been many stellar flybys in our Solar System's history, and researchers wonder if they could've triggered dramatic shifts in Earth's paleoclimate. Image Credit: Michael Osadciw/University of Rochester.

If our Solar System seems stable, it's because our short lifespans make it seem that way. Earth revolves, night follows day, the Moon moves through light and shadow, and the Sun hangs in the sky. But in reality, everything is moving and influencing everything else, and the fine balance we observe can easily be disrupted. Could passing stars have disrupted Earth's orbit and ushered in dramatic climatic changes in our planet's past?



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