These stars move out of their solar system due to coming into contact with a giant black hole or due to the powerful gravity of their binary stars. These rogue stars are very dangerous and can cause huge destruction by entering any solar system. Scientists found a wandering star that had passed through the outer region of our solar system, which is actually the Oort cloud, only 70 thousand years ago, during which its distance from our sun was only one light year. Scientists have also predicted that in the coming few lakh years, another such star will pass through our solar system at a distance of less than one light year, which can cause huge destruction in our solar system.
Rogue stars, or wandering stars, are such stars wandering in our universe that are outside the gravitational influence of any other object. Usually, such stars, due to coming into contact with the powerful gravitational force of a black hole or a gravitational pull from another star, accelerate to high speeds and start wandering in interstellar space. According to an estimate, about 30 to 40 percent of the stars present in our universe may be such wandering stars. Scientists have found that in just 15 million years, around 700 stars have passed through our solar system, with a minimum distance of 15 light years. In which 20 stars have passed with just a few light years distance. Scientists have found that they were able to make a weird change in the outer region of our solar system. Some of them were so close that they were visible in the night sky through our naked eyes.
A team of scientists has discovered one such wandering star, which has been named Scholz Star. This star was discovered in 2013 with the help of Chile's European Southern Observatory. It is a red star that is now present in the Monoceros constellation, and it is around 20 light years away from our Earth. Due to the lack of proper side-to-side movement in this star, scientists had failed to discover it for many years, but after a few years of study, a team of scientists finally discovered it. When scientists studied its movement, they came to know that this star is moving away from us at a very high speed. In such a situation, scientists collected the necessary data and tried to find out the position of this star thousands of years ago and its trajectory.
Looking at its current location and speed, scientists have estimated that about 70 thousand years ago, this star passed through our solar system at a distance of only 52 thousand AU, i.e., about 1 light year. The star system closest to our solar system is Proxima Centauri, which is located around 4.2 light years from our solar system. It is also a red dwarf star whose mass is only 15 percent of our sun. But, during its closest approach, it would have been a very bright object in our night sky that our ancestors could have easily seen with the naked eye, just like the
Betelgeuse Supernova.
During its closest approach, this stray star passed through the outermost region of our solar system, i.e., the Oort cloud. When it passed through our solar system, it must have caused a lot of changes in this region, due to which many icy comets must have also entered our solar system. And it must have had some impact on our Earth as well, due to which many meteorite showers would have been seen here. After this discovery, other scientists decided to discover and study more such wandering stars. For this discovery, he took the help of the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite. Which is a satellite whose job it is to study the position and characteristics of millions of stars present in our sky.
From the initial data collected by this satellite, scientists came to know that many more such stars may enter our solar system in the future. But one of these stars, which has been named Gliese 710, will pass closest to our solar system, which will break all the old records.