How many stars in the solar system? In such popular social networks and other segments of RuNet, you can often find such a question / survey. As a rule, it is accompanied by commentaries on the near compatriots, who basically do not understand the structure of our space house. Indeed, how many stars in the solar system? What a stupid question? Here is the problem of how many stars in our galaxy, it would have been more complicated, and quite reasonably set. But not everything is so simple! Deep deep in the heart of the matter, You can come across absolutely amazing things. It turns out that among today's scientists, the question of how many stars in the solar system is quite serious. And it's not about seekers of popular sensations and pseudoscientific theories about the origin of the world, alien visits or world conspiracies, but about quite respected astrophysicists.
Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud
If not everyone, then certainly the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants know the planetary composition of our star system: the terrestrial planets, the gas giant Jupiter, separated from the rest by the asteroid belt , belted by the rings Saturn, distant Neptune and so on. Significantly fewer people, if we are not talking about those who are especially interested in this topic, are aware of the deprivation of Pluto's status as a planet. The fact is that already in the 2000th years outside the orbit, bodies were discovered that were not inferior to Pluto in size. For the first time since the time of ancient Greece, the question arose before astronomers: "And what, in fact, is it legitimate to call a planet?" As a result of the generally accepted consensus and acceptance of a number of criteria, Pluto was designated a dwarf planet, like the newly discovered Eris, Sedna and others. These objects are numerous and constantly open to the gaze of scientists more and more new bodies. They are concentrated two times farther from the Sun than the orbit of Neptune, and are called the Kuiper belt. However, the subsequent study of comets constantly flown into the solar system convinced astronomers that their source is not the Kuiper belt. According to modern ideas, thousands of times further, approximately at the distance of one light year, there is another disk of concentration of solid celestial bodies. It is his indignation that leads to a periodic invasion of the inner radius of the solar system of comets, literally bombarding them with planets like Saturn, Mars and Earth. Presumably, the objects in the Oort cloud were once formed near the Sun, but later dispersed deep into space, now rotating in a distant orbit. But what causes the perturbations of these bodies and causes them to periodically move back to the Sun?
Nemesis
And here is the question of how many stars in the solar system, it acquires not mocking, but quite serious character. In the mid-1980s, paleontologists Jack Sepkoski and David Raup had declared the idea that life on Earth, very similar, was subject to mass extinction with an enviable periodicity of 26-30 thousand years. However, the causes of these extinctions paleontologists could not Install. On the basis of this, theories about the extraterrestrial origin of catastrophes, or more precisely - meteorite, began to be born. A number of scientists to this day suggest that the Sun may have a double star, which is a dull red dwarf (so no one has noticed it so far) and introduces perturbations into the Oort cloud with the specified periodicity, which leads to a cosmic bombardment of the Earth and the destruction of all living things . The hypothetical red dwarf was called Nemesis. For the sake of justice, it should be noted that the assumption of a real Nemesis in our day is increasingly weakening. This is facilitated by the lack of success in its search, and the lack of evidence of periodic bombardment, and finally, a skeptical attitude to the version of such a permanent extinction of living species on Earth. On the other hand, most famous stars just have partners. For example, our closest galactic neighbor is a system of a double star of Alpha and Centaurus Proxima. And how many stars of years, so much they revolve around a common center of gravity.