Can a rogue star kick Earth out of the solar system?

Life on any planet faces numerous existential threats — including the possibility of the planet getting kicked out of its solar system altogether. One team of researchers ran the numbers and found that the Earth is safe from such a catastrophe — almost.

Can a rogue star kick Earth out of the solar system? : Read more

Interesting report closing remarks concerning the habitable Earth.

"The researchers then took these results and applied them to our galactic neighborhood, using our knowledge of the positions, masses, and velocities of the stars nearest to us. They found that, on average, our planet only had a 1/15,000 chance of orbital destabilization over the course of our 4-billion-year history. In other words, for every 10,000 Earth-like planets in our neighborhood, only one has suffered a disaster. But things get much worse in the busy, compact central bulge of the Milky Way. With all those stars, the chance of gravitational catastrophe is 160 times higher. Generally, that's pretty safe. But it does inform searches for life on distant exoplanets. The center of a galaxy is a generally unfriendly place, a hotbed of high-energy radiation and cosmic rays. And now we know it's also full of potentially deadly close calls between stars, close enough to knock life-bearing worlds out of their orbits. If life has managed to arise on any of the worlds there, it's in for a tough time."

At the moment, we have 4186 exoplanets confirmed, The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia

In exoplanet research, there is not *10,000 Earth-like planets in our neighborhood* confirmed at this time. The simulation is interesting though in pointing the stat out here.
 
Feb 27, 2020
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The answer is yes. It's likely that it's already happened to Earth according some theories. Earth quite possibly was a planet around a brown dwarf star we now know as Saturn. Saturn was captured by the Sun and it's planets Mars, Earth and Venus were ripped away and took up orbit around the Sun. One clue is the axial tilt of Saturn and the three smaller planets is nearly the same.
 
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At the moment, we have 4186 exoplanets confirmed, The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia

In exoplanet research, there is not *10,000 Earth-like planets in our neighborhood* confirmed at this time. The simulation is interesting though in pointing the stat out here.

You are correct, but I think they meant to emphasize just the 10,000 nearest stars; then, in the purely hypothetical sense, they just treated these stars' relative habitable zones as though they were habitable & did indeed have Earth-like worlds:

"The researchers then took these results and applied them to our galactic neighborhood, using our knowledge of the positions, masses, and velocities of the stars nearest to us."

The wording makes it confusing after that, but I assume that's how they ran their statistics. I don't think they even looked at a documented potential Earth-like exoplanet. Their 1 planet from 10,000 in 4 Billion years is a statistical artifact and not real....or could be, but to the most absolute miniscule of odds... The bad part is, this actually overestimated the odds of an Earth-like planet getting ejected out of a star's orbit...
 
Mar 25, 2020
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The answer is yes. It's likely that it's already happened to Earth according some theories. Earth quite possibly was a planet around a brown dwarf star we now know as Saturn. Saturn was captured by the Sun and it's planets Mars, Earth and Venus were ripped away and took up orbit around the Sun. One clue is the axial tilt of Saturn and the three smaller planets is nearly the same.
Well, Saturn does not have nearly enough mass to be a brown dwarf. I think the threshold is a few multiples of Jupiter`s mass.
 
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Catastrophe

"Science begets knowledge, opinion ignorance.
Just for the record:
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Web results

Brown dwarf - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org › wiki › Brown_dwarf
Comparison: most brown dwarfs are only slightly larger than Jupiter (10–15%) but up to 80 times more massive due to greater density. Image is approximately to ...
‎Sub-brown dwarf · ‎List of brown dwarfs · ‎Luhman 16 · ‎HR 2562 b

Cat :)
 

Catastrophe

"Science begets knowledge, opinion ignorance.
On the subject of Jupiter's possible development, here is an interesting snippet from Astronomy of January 2019:

"Jupiter's growth into a giant planet was delayed for about 2 million years while it absorbed kilometre-sized rocks, which temporarily stifled the planet's ability to accrete more gas."

Cat
 

Catastrophe

"Science begets knowledge, opinion ignorance.
COLGeek

"And the impact would be catastrophic (pun intended)."

Where do you think I got my pretty little picture from?
I am a great Asteroid fan. If you keep looking for the 'one that got away' you may find it too late!

Cat ;)
 

COLGeek

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It would seem that anything of substantial mass, enough to disrupt the orbital equilibrium of our planetary system, could produce very unfavorable conditions for us. A direct strike of sufficient mass and we could be the next dinosaurs.
 

Catastrophe

"Science begets knowledge, opinion ignorance.
Cat . . . . . . . . . trying to keep on topic . . . . . . . . .
Chances of an asteroid hit are vastly greater than having a planet ejected from the Solar System.
On the one hand we were blessed with many large cataclysmic (another cat for you) hits - Late Heavy Bombardment (4.5 to 3.8 billion years ago) . . . . . . . . .
Thank goodness we have agreed with your configuration of billion - ours was x another 1000 you probably remember - what would we call 4.5 x 10^9 if we had billion as 'our' billion as 1 x 10^12? . . . . . . . . . but we cannot assume they are all used up. There are most probably many more in the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt. Another rogue star (Ahhh! Back on topic) or maybe a larger Oumuamua and Bingo! Much Later Heavy Bombardment! and off we go again. I was just reading about the RADIUS of our solar system: "The distance from the Oort Cloud to the Sun has been estimated to an average of 50,000 AU, which makes the diameter of the Solar System to be about 100,000 AU." . . . . . . . . . and it is only 30 AU to Neptune. Also we have a different order for quotation marks and full stops compared with US.

This has taken a while - nearly time for Afternoon Tea here - just getting the buttered scones and Earl Grey, y'know :)
Best
Cat
 
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