How many stars in the solar system?In just scored today, the popularity of social networking and other segments of Runet can often find a similar question / poll.Usually, it is accompanied by comments about minded compatriots, fundamentally do not understand the structure of our cosmic home.Indeed, well how many stars in the solar system?What a stupid question?That task about how many stars in our galaxy, and it would have been more difficult, and it is reasonable to set.But not all so simple!Delve into the essence of the issue, you can run into absolutely amazing things.It turns out that among modern scholars is quite seriously the question of how many stars in the solar system.And the question now is not about sensation seekers popular and pseudo-scientific theories about the origin of the world, alien visits or global conspiracies, and a very respected astrophysicist.
Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud
If not everyone, then certainly the vast majority of planetary inhabitants known composition of our solar system: terrestrial planets, separated from the rest of the asteroid belt gas giant Jupiter, surrounded by rings of Saturn, the distant Neptune and so on.Significantly fewer people if it is not a special interest in this topic, it is known to deprive Pluto's planet status.The fact that in the two thousandth years beyond its orbit opened body that rivals Pluto in size.For the first time since the days of ancient Greece to the astronomers, the question arose: "What, actually, legitimately be called a planet?"As a result of the generally accepted consensus and adoption of a number of criteria, Pluto was designated a dwarf planet, like svezheotkrytye Eris, Sedna and others.These objects are numerous and constantly open eyes of scientists more and more body.They are concentrated in two times farther from the Sun than the orbit of Neptune, and became known as the Kuiper Belt.However, further study is constantly flies into the solar system comets convinced astronomers that their source - not the Kuiper Belt.According to modern concepts, even thousands of times more, at a distance of one light year is a different drive the concentration of solid celestial bodies.It was his resentment and leads to the periodic intrusion into the inner radius of the solar system comets, it is literally bombarded them planets like Saturn, Mars and Earth.Presumably the objects in the Oort cloud, a long time ago were formed near the Sun, but later dispersed deep into space, is now spinning on a distant orbit.But what causes the disturbance of these bodies, and forces them to periodically go back to the Sun?
nemesis
And here the question about how many stars in the solar system gains are not mocking, but quite serious.In the mid-80s paleontologists Jack Sepkoski and David Raup been declared the idea that life on Earth is very similar, subjected to mass extinction with enviable regularity - in the 26-30 thousand years.However, the cause of these extinctions, paleontologists have not been able to establish.On this basis, it was born the theory of an extraterrestrial origin of catastrophes - or rather, the meteorite.A number of scholars to date suggest that the Sun may have a star-double, which is a dim red dwarf (because it is still no one noticed) and perturbs the Oort cloud at specified intervals, which leads to the cosmic bombardment of the Earth and destroy all life.The hypothetical red dwarf named Nemesis.In fairness it should be noted that the assumption of real-life nemesis these days more and more weakened.This contributes to the lack of success in her quest, and the failure to prove the periodic bombardment, and finally skepticism about the release of such a permanent extinction of living species on Earth.On the other hand, most famous stars are just the same partners.For example, our nearest galactic neighbor - a binary star system Alpha Centauri and Proxima.And how many years the stars, as they orbit around a common center of gravity.
