Hey what's up with this theory about "Nemesis"?

Question

supposedly the suns companion star that orbits beyond the oort cloud and comes close every 58 million years and causes millions of asteroids to approach earth and the other panets.

What do you think?

Answer 1

If Nibiru, or planet x, is as described, then i should be able to see it with my back yard telescope.  There are over a million amateur astronomers, and several sensitive sky surveys.  Nibiru would have shown up.  It hasn't.

In 2013, the year 2012 will be known as the year the world didn't end.  It will not be an unusual year in that regard.  Predictions of the end of the world have come and gone with absurd regularity.

Here's a prediction of the end of the world that will happen: The world will eventually end.  I'd like to be around when it does - since i expect it will take billions of years.  Better yet, i'd like to witness it from a safe distance.

Answer 2

It was an old "theory" based on some perceived regular period in mass extinctions (the 58 million year period).

The theory described exactly what you write (the disruption of the Oort cloud near Nemesis's perihelion sends millions of comets and asteroids towards the inner solar system).

Based on the theory, Nemesis would be on the way out presently, towards aphelion, so that we should be safe for about 30 million years.

But recent analyses of the extinction periods no longer support the theory.  It is not considered a useful theory any more.

Also, even a brown dwarf (smaller than what Nemesis was expected to be) would have been detected by now.  We are no longer searching for it.

Answer 3

It's not a theory. It's nonsense. These are very different things.

Answer 4

This is a highly speculative proposition. Some paleontologists suggested that the periodicity of massive extinctions on Earth was due to the perturbation on the solar system caused by a dim star of large planet of a very distant and elliptical orbit. Already to have 4 or 5 such extinctions and conclude to a periodicity of 58 million years over a 250 million years "sample" is a bit of statistical stretch, there is just not enough data to show anything.

But it allowed several people to get rich by selling doomsday books.

And my feeling is that this is a lot of baloney.

Answer 5

was not found yet, and as the last major impact happened 65 million years ago, I suspect it does not exist.

Anything of the size of Jupiter would be found in the 100 LY around our sun. Stars are larger as Jupiter.

Answer 6

I think we'd have spotted it by now, if it exists.  

Just guessing.

Answer 7

i highly doubt someone could construe the 'facts' that much, so you must be just looking for attention....