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Nemesis: Binary Star

Ixion

Inquiring Mind
Ixion
Joined
Mar 26, 2008
Messages
2,431
Ok, so this is not new news, but I find it interesting. I did a brief search on the forums and did not see a mention of it, at least not for awhile. However, I find it quite interesting that there is some evidence, mostly statistical, that our Sun might be part of a binary star with another small star, probably a brown dwarf.
Binary Research Institute
Some astronomers have dubbed the dwarf "Nemesis" because of its elusiveness towards definitive proof and the idea that this star is hurling many comets and rogue asteroids into the inner parts of our solar system, as if out to destroy us :p

Anybody else out there that finds this intriguing?
 
Possibly. The story of a second star companion to ours is part of cultural mythology as well. I am not well versed in Asimov.
 
I'm not a cultural mythologist but I likes a bit of Science Fiction. Not sure if I can post links but Wiki's got a nice little summary of the book. I'll leave to others more versed in science without the fiction to continue the thread. ;)
 
You're not talking about the brown dwarf (AKA Planet X) that supposedly orbits the sun every 3600 years are you? The one that was predicted to shift the earth's poles in May of 2003?
 
DrBaltar said:
You're not talking about the brown dwarf (AKA Planet X) that supposedly orbits the sun every 3600 years are you? The one that was predicted to shift the earth's poles in May of 2003?
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I don't know anything about the shifting of the poles (since my understanding is that is a gradual process over many years) but it may very well be the same otherwise. I am talking about an elusive brown dwarf that is possibly between .75-1.5 light years from our Sun.
 
There are published papers in peer-reviewed journals about the companion hypothesis. Notably, papers in Nature. If scientists thought this hypothesis didn't have any merit, then these papers would not have been published.
 
Ixion said:
There are published papers in peer-reviewed journals about the companion hypothesis. Notably, papers in Nature. If scientists thought this hypothesis didn't have any merit, then these papers would not have been published.
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It's fine to point out and analyze statistical anomalies in the behavior of the sun and planets and point out possible causes. That's only a hypothesis though, and not worth the paper it's printed on without saying (ETA: or without another group of researchers saying) "and based on this data I predicted that the brown dwarf will be at [insert astronomical coordinates here] at [insert date here] and low and behold there it is!"
 
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I do recall that PBS' program Nova had an episode which mentioned the Nemesis hypothesis. This was many years ago, however.
 
There are several ways the mass, intrinsic brightness, and distance of any Sol binary star (or any other 'large' object for that matter) can be constrained.

Perhaps the most powerful is to look for unmodelled accelerations of the solar system barycentre, using several decades of pulsar data. This has been done, at least once, and the result is no Nemesis, at least of the brown dwarf kind close enough to have had any impact on major body solar system orbits in the last several thousand years. This same method can be used to constrain the total mass of as-yet-undetected Kuiper Belt (and beyond) objects, and non-spherical distributions of dark matter.

A related method involves unmodelled deviations in solar system body ephemerides; same result.

IR all-sky surveys, such as 2MASS and IRAS, can also limit the existence of any close brown dwarfs, either by the proper motion of such objects or their colours (undiscovered brown dwarfs are faves of astronomers, and their colours are a dead-givaway, despite there being hundreds of millions of stars in surveys like this); nothing like Nemesis found to date.

Finally, there are targetted searches such as RECONS, which specifically look for close, very red stars that have been overlooked to date; nothing like Nemesis found (yet).

While I'm sure there is still some room in parameter space for Nemesis to hide, it is highly unlikely that Sol has a brown dwarf binary companion that's any closer than, say, half a light-year away (and only slightly more likely that there any such companion at all).
 
Thank you DeiRenDopa. That is exactly the response I was looking for. I was merely intrigued by the possibility of such a star to exist. I don't know enough about astronomy to know what had been done or how. I know that this hypothesis has been around for a long time, but hypotheses are created to be tested. It is relieving to know this has been tested and, so far, does not stand up.

I felt like some of the other responses to this thread were rather blunt, and I already am aware I am ignorant on the subject. I think DrBaltar's need to address hypotheses (unless I am reading his post incorrectly about being able to pinpoint a location) is a dangerous way to approach science. To reach a conclusion based on a small set of data could very well be led by researchers fitting data to a foregone conclusion. It is much better to present a hypothesis, especially if it is the first time, and point to some data that would lead to the hypothesis, than attempting to prove it on one go. I think Carl Sagan had it correct in quoting Arthur Conan Doyle in The Demon-Haunted World as
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."

I never claimed that the hypothesis about Nemesis was a solid one; simply that it had caught my attention and I thought it was worthy of some discussion, no matter how sleight. This is a forum for open-minded discussion of ideas.
 
I saw some mention of Nemesis on an episode of The Universe. A few scientists think it's a possible explanation for why mass extinctions have occurred in regular intervals. The theory is that a small star in an irregular orbit might occasionally shift some asteroids/comets from the Oort Cloud into the inner solar system, and make it more likely at certain times that one of them might hit the Earth. It would have to be about a light year away at its closest to the sun in order to have the orbital period consistent with the mass extinctions.

I should add that other scientists on the program scoffed at the theory and said that if such an object existed, we should be able to detect it.

ETA: The opponents of the Nemesis theory also pointed out that a similar binary star system has not yet been found.
 
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ravdin said:
I saw some mention of Nemesis on an episode of The Universe. A few scientists think it's a possible explanation for why mass extinctions have occurred in regular intervals. The theory is that a small star in an irregular orbit might occasionally shift some asteroids/comets from the Oort Cloud into the inner solar system, and make it more likely at certain times that one of them might hit the Earth. It would have to be about a light year away at its closest to the sun in order to have the orbital period consistent with the mass extinctions.

I should add that other scientists on the program scoffed at the theory and said that if such an object existed, we should be able to detect it.

ETA: The opponents of the Nemesis theory also pointed out that a similar binary star system has not yet been found.
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.

Caveat: I could have remembered quite wrongly!

I think I saw some material, several years ago now, that showed the earlier work on a ~26 million year period in the extinction (etc) data, on closer examination (or more data, or both) showed there is no such periodic signal (of any statistical significance).

Doesn't mean there isn't such a periodic signal in the fossil/geological record ... just that current data isn't consistent with such a signal ...
 
Ixion said:
I think DrBaltar's need to address hypotheses (unless I am reading his post incorrectly about being able to pinpoint a location) is a dangerous way to approach science. To reach a conclusion based on a small set of data could very well be led by researchers fitting data to a foregone conclusion. It is much better to present a hypothesis, especially if it is the first time, and point to some data that would lead to the hypothesis, than attempting to prove it on one go.
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I didn't mean to suggest a hypothesis should be presented, experimented, and analyzed in one paper. That's why I edited my post to say "or without another group of researchers saying...". And again, as I posted before, it is fine to point out and analyze statistical anomalies in the behavior of the sun and planets and point out possible causes.

But if you do a bit of searching around there is TONS of woo out there on the internet full of people boldly claiming the sun has a companion based on this very weak hypothesis, and they have done precisely what you accuse me of condoning:
Ixion said:
To reach a conclusion based on a small set of data could very well be led by researchers fitting data to a foregone conclusion.
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With that hopefully behind us, I restate my original response: The reasons for postulating an orbiting brown dwarf are very weak.

If you disagree, please tell me what indicators strongly point to a companion brown dwarf rather than saying other journals didn't reject his claims. They shouldn't reject his claims as long as his paper is well written, the data is legit, the research is good and it is presented in a novel approach. Although I have seen people mock the acceptance process by submitting pure BS, yet in strict adherence to the journal's guidelines and the paper was accepted.
 
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