Free Astronomy Magazine March-April 2015

I n their seemingly chaotic motion around the centre of the Galaxy, it could happen that some stars approach other stars lo- cated in different orbits. The likelihood that these encounters result in a collision are vir- tually nil, given the vastness of space, but relatively close flybys can nonetheless take place, sufficient to disturb the tranquillity of any planetary systems. In our solar sys- tem’s specific case, a star that was to transit close enough to perturb the Oort Cloud, consisting of an endless number of come- tary nuclei with diameters greater than 1 28 SOLAR SYSTEM Only discovered in 2013, Scholz’s Star turned out to be a very interesting red dwarf, due to the fact of having transi- ted through the Oort Cloud in astronomi- cally recent times. The effects of this transit may be visible in the inner solar system in the form of comet shower, but not before 2 million years from now. MARCH-APRIL 2015 Some 70,000 a star in the