spacetoday.net: Stellar passage shaped solar system

Posted: Thu, Dec 2, 2004, 7:14 AM ET (1214 GMT)
Computer simulation of solar system collision (U. Utah)

Some of the objects in the outer solar system may have originated in other solar systems, according to research published in the current issue of Nature. Using computer modeling, astronomers showed how the newly-formed solar system could have been disrupted by the close passage of another star about 30-200 million years after the Sun formed. That flyby could have stripped some objects from our solar system, while the Sun's gravity took some objects from the other star's solar system. Astronomers identified one Kuiper Belt Object, 2000 CR105, that is the most likely solar system member to have been captured from a passing star, based on the KBO's highly elliptical and inclined orbit. Sedna, a large planetoid discovered earlier this year with a very eccentric, outer orbit, likely formed around the Sun, but a star's close passage could have disrupted the planetoid's orbit into something more like its current orbit.