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Underground > Laboratory >

Do we live in a binary star system?

09:55 / 25.04.06

I'd love it if we lived in a binary star system. The glowing spheres look so pretty rotating in my mind's eye. Here's a suggestion that I might not just be daydreaming:
Evidence mounts, slowly

10:11 / 25.04.06

Umm - your link doesn't work...

And yeah - I suppose an alternative to to drop a bit more mass into Jupiter, prompting the gas giant to reach the mass sufficient to kick start the nuclear reaction to turn it into a sun...

A

02:38 / 26.04.06

I've thought the same thing about Jupiter (on account of it being sometimes referred to as a "failed star"), but, apparently, it would need to be something like 12 to 70 times larger to actually become a star.

11:15 / 26.04.06

I'm being so rubbish.. first I got the link wrong. Then I edited my pst and got it wrong again.

Sorry my fellow 'loids

Here's where I was trying to send y'all:
The real article and not some stupid broken link

Feel free to pick apart as seems most appropriate.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

21:48 / 26.04.06

My main issue with this theory (and I am no astro-doctor) is that we would, well, SEE another start that was close enough to effect Sedna and Xena, wouldn't we? I assume the 2 bodies are MUCH (all caps) closer the Aplah Centauri, whcih would suggest that the mystery star would be much (lower case) closer then the nearest star.

So where is it?

01:34 / 27.04.06

There's Nemesis a theoretical red or brown dwarf hidden in or beyond the Oort Cloud, hurtling space debris at the inner planets and causing extinctions, but it is too far away (50,000 - 100,000 AU) to have a measurable effect on Sedna (50,000 - 950,000 AU).

I like the Nemesis theory, but I'm not sure how seriously it's taken in serious scientific circles.

06:26 / 27.04.06

I'm not a real solar system dynamicist, I just play one on the Internet. I'm a baby geophysicist, almost put my fingers in some planetary science pies which require giving a serious shit about cratering rates, but then NASA's budget went to hell. Anyway, I have access to a nice library; after a quick search on Web of Science, I feel comfortable saying that the Nemesis theory, in the form of "there's a shiny pretty star we just haven't seen yet", is taken not even a little bit seriously in scientific circles.

Nemesis in the form of "maybe a far-away Jupiter, or periodic perturbations from galactic disk dynamics, or something" is in somewhat better shape, though I wouldn't say it's mainstream. There's still some dispute about periodicity in the terrestrial crater record; skimming abstracts, I find the "no significant periodicity" camp significantly more persuasive. We expect to see, and we do indeed see, long-term variations in the amount of interplanetary dust hitting Earth, but the variations observed aren't especially periodic (perhaps an artefact of a short record?) and don't line up with the smithereening of the dinosaurs (see: Mukhopadhyay et al., Geochim. et Cosmochim. Acta 65:4, 2001).

Also: this Binary Research Institute is run by some rich old investment banker who decided to retire to nurture his love of the "celestial knowledge of ancient civilizations". It is not a legitimate scientific institution.

*

21:34 / 27.04.06

Geez, I don't know who you are, but you sure seem full of yourself. We're all humbled by your NASA almost-credentials, I'm sure. Next you'll be telling us you rent time on the Hubble for recreational star-gazing. (*)

So how about telling us in plain language why this theory shouldn't be taken seriously? And no fair "real scientists don't believe it, and if they do, they're not real scientists" stunts. Why should we accept received wisdom from the scientific establishment any more than we accept received wisdom from the political establishment?

* (

)

Kiltartan Cross

06:48 / 28.04.06

I shall bring my credentials as a Master of Astrophysics into play. Although it's been a while!

As far as I can tell the trouble with the Nemesis idea is that there's no evidence for it. It's quite possible that there could be a companion star (although, really, it would have to be a very small and dim one, a brown dwarf or summat; if it were brighter it should've been obvious by now), it's just that there's no particular reason to believe that there is one.

Basically, the evidence advanced in favour of Nemesis, such as it is, goes roughly "if there were such a star, it could affect the Oort cloud when it was nearby, leading to an increased incidence of nasty things hitting Earth, and periodical mass extinctions; we do observe the mass extinctions, but as they aren't periodical, in order for the star to exist we have to also propose that its own orbit has been changed" which is roughly like saying "there's a man over there with a gun taking potshots at me! behind that fence! ...whaddya mean there's noone behind that fence? Oh well, er... he must have moved..."

I think it'd be quite cool if there were such a star, mind. Well, apart from all the flaming death and destruction.

Hydra vs Leviathan

21:11 / 07.05.06

I've heard it suggested that the Oort cloud (which, IIRC, is still actually a speculative entity, and Sedna is the first object found that might be part of it) goes really really far out, far out enough in fact to be close to halfway to the nearest stars from us, and thus to interact on occasion with other stars' Oort clouds, thus possibly causing the "Nemesis effect"...

Which isn't quite the same thing as a binary star system, but does suggest that, if the sun had a binary (which would have to be much closer than half way to other stars), it would be a hell of a lot more noticeable than that...

In fact, while there's a possibility i'm getting this simply from science fiction films and novels (Pitch Black springs to mind), i was under the impression that, if there were planets in a binary star system, the planets would orbit the whole binary as if it was a single star, rather than the second star being further out than the planets...

Interesting tho (i'm definitely no astrophysicist)...

23:27 / 07.05.06

The Badlands emits enough gravimetric distortions to hide a star. I wouldn't dismiss the Nemesis theory too quickly...

Kiltartan Cross

07:01 / 08.05.06

I was under the impression that, if there were planets in a binary star system, the planets would orbit the whole binary as if it was a single star, rather than the second star being further out than the planets...

They can orbit either around both, or around one or the other. The Earth-Moon or Pluto-Charon systems are quite close in mass (at least, have mass ratios which wouldn't be beyond the bounds of a binary star system) and we could imagine something in orbit around Earth, or the Moon, or both (if the Sun weren't there to complicate things, that is).
I think it's more likely you'd have a habitable zone around either star of a binary (that is, where the stars are relatively separate, each could have a system of planets essentially like our Solar system) than that you'd have a habitable zone around the pair. I think to have a habitable zone around a pair they'd need to be close together and one or both stars would need to be very bright, so that the habitable zone would be a long way away and less subject to weird orbital perturbation effects.
Don't quote me, though. We spent most of our time looking at dust grains in the ISM, metrics and masers created by stars, all of which are very cool, and none of which I can remember either.

04:07 / 09.05.06

Ah, id, if you're going to play these rhetorical games with me you should start them when I'm not stuck programming for days upon days upon days

Someone actually brought up Nemesis at a seminar the other day (orbital resonances in the Kuiper belt - they're dominated by Neptune) - there was a bit of nervous chuckling, and some diplomatic use of the word "dicey". It was a legitimate scientist who asked, though, and I use the word "legitimate" rather than "real" for a reason: not to say that this guy is or isn't "real" (he might be a bit potty round the edges, but that's tenure for you) but to emphasize the social constructedness of such evaluations. There are accepted standards of practice for evaluating scientific ideas. Violating these standards doesn't make your idea wrong, but there's an awful lot of scientific community culture that has grown with the intent of countering personal bias; people who attempt to sidestep that culture, and set up research institutes with explicit agendas, sure do set off my alarm bells.

But the actual reason you should trust the scientific community on this one is that working out orbital dynamics problems for yourself is a huge pain in the ass.

Also! There are totally binary and even trinary stars with known planets. These seem to be planets that orbit one star, in some resonance with the other(s). But, this is likely to be observation bias - close-in planets are easier to detect, because they create larger wobbles in their stars.

A

13:09 / 09.05.06

Some interesting links there. I was about to post asking whether or not it's theoretically possible for a planet to have a figure-eight orbit around both stars in a binary system, but according to the first link, such an orbit would be too unstable, and the planet would be ejected from the solar system (which is a shame, because I think itt would be pretty damn cool).