Working with the ancient fossil record, paleontologists noticed that it appeared
ID: 291517 • Letter: W
Question
Working with the ancient fossil record, paleontologists noticed that it appeared that Earth suffered major extinctions every 27,000,000 years. In turn, astronomers have found evidence of large impacts on the surface - marked by left-over craters - with spacings of 27,000,000 years. It was theorized that the Sun might have had a companion star - a small, dim, red dwarf class star with a mass around 100 times that of Jupiter - lurking out far beyond the Kuiper Belt. Further, if the orbit of this small star - dubbed Nemesis - passed close to the Kuiper belt during perihelion, its gravitational disturbance could upset some KBO orbits, launching asteroids on orbits that brought them crashing into the Earth. If there was a mini-companion star to the Sun named Nemesis, how far away would it have to be to periodically cause a bombardment (and mass extinctions) on Earth?
200 AU
9000 AU
25,000 AU
90,000 AU
200,000 AU
1.4 × 1011 AU
27,000,000 AU
200 AU
9000 AU
25,000 AU
90,000 AU
200,000 AU
1.4 × 1011 AU
27,000,000 AU
Explanation / Answer
Sun like star called nemesis, it orbits the sun in a huge ellipse, with furthest point of 3 light years away. every 25 to 30 million it comes close to the sun and it slams the outer region of solar system called oort cloud, which is at a distance pof half light year away from the sun. These theorized companioin star(Nemesis), thruogh its gravitational pull, unleashes the furious storm of comets in the inner solar system that lasts anywhere from one million to two million years most of them strike the earth and triggers the sequence of ecological catastrophes.
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