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Illustration shows the earth surrounded by asteroids – but who is the alien invader?. | Credit: Robert Lea (created by Canva)
One million alien visitors from another star system can now be lurred in the solar system. However, here we are not talking about “little green men” – more “small (and not so few) gray rocks”, asteroids from the Triple Star Alpha Centauri system.
Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to our own, lying about 4.3 light-years. New research shows that if Alpha Centauri dumped as much material as the solar system, then up to a million space rocks, larger than 328 feet (100 meters), can be lurking in the Oort cloud, a strip of ice material at the end of our solar system. Some of these alien visitors could even break through the internal solar system.
The scientists behind the new finding suggest that the amount of material entering the solar system from Alpha Centauri will increase over the next 28,000 years, as the neighboring star system makes its closest approach to our own.
“We were a little surprised to find that the amount of Alfa Centaur material was not completely insignificant,” a team member and the researcher of the University of Western Ontario Paul Wigert told Space.com.
“Space is” big “and therefore it would not be a surprise to find that maybe no Alfa Centaur material can reach us at all. The fact that he may be present at levels we could find is a pleasant surprise,” he added. “These objects could really be everywhere in the solar system at any given time.”
Related: ALPHA CENTAURI: Facts about the stars in the neighborhood
Alpha Centauri Cutters The Sun System As a Wet Dog
Wiegert and his colleague, Doctor of the University of West Ontario. Student Cole Greg was inspired to conduct a study of these alien invaders from the first known interstellar visitors.
These were “oumuamua in the form of a cigar that caused movement when it was tossed through the internal solar system in 2017, and the more conventionally formed comet/asteroid Hybrid 2i/Borisosv, which was discovered in 2019.
“We will surely find more of the two famous interstellar visitors, Oumuamua and the comet Borisov,” Wigert said. “This is an attempt to find out where we are likely to arrive in the interstellar visitors from whom we will find.”
The illustration of the asteroid artist ‘Oumuamua, the first interstellar object ever known to visit our solar system. | Credit: M. Kornmesser/European South Observatory
Alpha Centaur is home to three stars, including the closest star to Earth, different from the sun, proxima Centaur and an unknown number of planets.
While these stars and planets rotate around each other, their gravitational interactions disturb the orbits of other smaller objects in the Alpha Centaur, ranging from asteroids and comets – planesimals left over from the formation of our neighboring system – to particles of dust.
Think of Alpha Centauri as a wet dog after a long muddy walk, shaking a damp spray of dirt, mud, water and even tiny pebbles. And just as the owner of this dog crashes with this material, if they stand too close, the solar system is enhanced by Alfa Centaur fabric, with the Oort cloud serving as our unfortunate jacket, capturing much of the Detrita.
A diagram showing the structure of the solar system and its icy bodies Credit: NASA
The duo conducted a simulation of the solar system and Alpha Centauri, which lasted over 100 million years. He showed that a considerable number of sites could reach the solar system from Alpha Centauri.
“Alpha Centauri objects can enter the extreme outer boundaries of our solar system, defined as the outer edge of the Oort cloud, at a speed maybe 50 a year,” Wiegart said. “But only a very small part of them would approach the sun enough to be visible. We estimated that there was only one in a million chance that an asteroid from Alpha Centaur is currently in the orbit of Saturn.”
The researcher added that due to the high speed at which they enter the solar system, many of these interstellar visitors are unlikely to hang around our space backyard, making visits through flying just like Omuamua and 2L/Borisov.
“Because they have quite high speeds, they do not capture gravitational from our sun, and instead they just go through our system,” Wiegart added.
Duet findings may be useful in the future, as the study involves clues that could be used to indicate interstellar visitors originating from Alpha Centaur.
“Our study shows that Alpha Centauri asteroids have a lot of specific instructions and speeds, and if a new asteroid is discovered, traveling in this way, it would be a strong indicator that it may have Alpha Centauri as its origin,” Wiegart said.
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“The ability to study materials from Alpha Centauri is incredibly exciting,” Wiegart said. “Finding an asteroid from there in our solar system would be like getting an example return mission from another star system, but free of charge.”
The study added that the next step is to explore other close star systems to see how it can be naturally transported naturally from them to our solar system.
“It is assumed that some are more effective sources of such material than others, and we are interested in knowing which one to expect to see material and who we do not do it,” Wiegart concluded. “Can we compare materials from a different star system with these our own for the first time … Who knows what can we find?”
Duet studies appear as a paper -reviewed paper on the ARXIV paper storage website.