Nemesis: The Sun's Evil Twin (full documentary)

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is this the video?

Yea, that's the vid man.






Star Systems Hint at Possibility of Sun's Nemesis



The left disk is seen face-on. The narrow disk on the right is tipped nearly edge-on from our point of view. The black central circles are produced by the camera's coronagraph, which blocks out the star so its fainter surroundings can be imaged. Credit: NASA, ESA, and P. Kalas (University of California, Berkeley)

Debris disks discovered around two nearby stars look strikingly like the Kuiper Belt in the outer part of our solar system, astronomers said today. The disks were found in a survey of 22 Sun-like stars by the Hubble Space Telescope. By blocking out light from the central stars, Hubble was able to image dust and other material around the stars. The stars are about 60 light-years away, and the shape of their disks have astronomers pondering the long-debated possibility that our own Sun might have an as-yet unfound companion dubbed Nemesis.

Unseen companions?
Each of the two disks has a sharp outer edge that might be caused by an unseen companion star that gravitationally grooms the material. Our own Kuiper Belt, which contains comets, Pluto and other frozen worlds, is thought to have similarly abrupt outer bound. Unlike younger stars with debris disks-thought to be the stuff of planet formation-these two stars are more than 300 million years old. Things have likely settled into somewhat stable configurations with planets and well-defined debris streams, perhaps similar to our own solar system, which is now 4.6 billion years old. The small sampling of debris disks that have been discovered shows they fall into two categories: those with a broad belt, wider than about 50 astronomical units (AU); and narrow ones with a width of between 20 and 30 AU and a sharp outer boundary, probably like our own Kuiper Belt. An astronomical unit, or AU, is the average distance between the Earth and Sun, about 93 million miles. Our Kuiper Belt is thought to be narrow, extending from the orbit of Neptune at 30 AU to about 50 AU. Most of the handful of known stellar debris disks seem to have a central area cleared of debris, perhaps by planets.

Sun's Nemesis?
Kalas and Graham speculate that stars also having sharp outer edges to their debris disks have a companion-a star or brown dwarf-that keeps the disk from spreading outward, similar to how Saturn's moons shape the edges of some of the planet's rings. "The story of how you make a ring around a planet could be the same as the story of making rings around a star," Kalas said. Perhaps a passing star ripped off the edges of the original planetary disk, but a star-sized companion, remaining in place, would be necessary to keep the remaining disk material from spreading outward, he figures.

The scenario has Kalas and his colleagues thinking that the Sun might also have a companion that keeps the Kuiper Belt confined within a sharp boundary. U.C. Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller has proposed such a star, which he calls Nemesis, but no evidence has been found for one. "These are the types of stars around which you would expect to find habitable zones and planets that could develop life," said lead researcher Paul Kalas of the University of California, Berkeley. The findings will be reported in the Jan. 20 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters



http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A410941
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0 ... stars.html

[Shaggietrip Profile]

Just watched. I did enjoy watching it. Although seemed to leave me wanting more. Most the info I had known already in general. Only because the Sun is an interest of mine. I am sure much will be new to many. I said more meaning in a way that the video was made a bit early. They have so much data to go through as of yet. This particular project was completed in 2011. So leave ya hangin a bit. They gave no clue of when an expected completion date of finishing a first look at all the data. Or what percentage they have went through up to this point. I can only imagine what this satellite is capturing.


Thanks for posting

[Constabul Profile]

Finally got to watch this, my signal bounced off the moon at the right angle.
Is good to see some level of research being put to this subject. Tho I think they are going way to far out time frame wise, where I still find myself leaning towards the Great Year video.
It could be that the scientist want to have that "first" claim, and so the are making the time frame 26 million yrs, vs 24 to 26 thousand yrs. Which is in line with what older cultures have noted and passed down.

In both cases a brown dwarf star is the culprit, and difficult to spot.
As both videos note, binary stars are the most common, and single star being more rare (by observation).

Either way, still enjoyed watching it.

[Clearized1 Profile]

Gr8 thread post OP.
Even as a young kid I have been fascinated with the stars, and what else exists outside this globe we live on, and NEVER believed the theory that our system was a singular star system.

Once I became an educated Electronics Technician it cemented even further my belief that our system must be a binary star system, based on the negative/positive that our planet/existence is related to.

Any other videos that anyone can post up here related to this subject will be appreciated/watched (absorbed by my cranium) to further help my understanding of this wonderful thing we call existence.