Scientists believe that in about a billion years the Earth will become too hot to live, as our sun grows larger and hotter.
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However, scientists believe a chance encounter with a passing star could save our planet by flinging it into a cooler orbit or helping it break free from the solar system entirely, a new theoretical study says.
The term rogue stars describes stars that have been ejected from their solar systems and are now traveling through interstellar space. Although these stars are very rare, they pose a potential threat to planets in their path.
The Sun newspaper quoted researchers in the new study as saying that this threat could be a saving grace for Earth hundreds of millions of years from now.
Earth is now located in our solar system’s habitable zone, which is the distance from the star at which liquid water could exist on the surfaces of the planets it orbits.
But because our Sun is a red giant, it will get hotter and larger, eventually consuming Earth in 5 billion years.
This is what prompted scientists to study the possibility of removing the Earth from its orbit to become a free planet. To play with this concept, a team of astronomers simulated what would happen if a rogue star came our way.
The team produced 12,000 simulations, in some of which the star’s passage pushed Earth into a farther, cooler orbit.
In other cases, our planet (along with some or all of the other planets) has descended into the Oort Cloud, an enormous spherical cloud thought to surround the solar system (at the edge of the solar system) and extend a distance of three light-years.
What’s even more interesting is that in a few simulations, the wandering star manages to pull Earth away by gravity.
However, even with the very small chance of a rogue star coming our way, Earth’s chance of survival would still be only 1 in 35,000.
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