A Star Disturbed the Comets of the Solar System in Prehistory

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A Star Disturbed the Comets of the Solar System in Prehistory

About 70,000 years ago, when the human species was already on Earth, a small reddish star approached our solar system and gravitationally disturbed comets and asteroids. Astronomers from the Complutense University of Madrid and the University of Cambridge have verified that the movement of some of these objects is still marked by that stellar encounter. […]

Unique Fragment from Earth’s Formation Returns after Billions of Years in Cold Storage

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Unique Fragment from Earth’s Formation Returns after Billions of Years in Cold Storage

Astronomers have found a unique object that appears to be made of inner Solar System material from the time of Earth’s formation, which has been preserved in the Oort Cloud far from the Sun for billions of years. Observations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope, and the Canada France Hawai`i Telescope, show that C/2014 S3 (PANSTARRS) […]