Nemesis, the Sun's Binary Star Companion?

0xC2 writes "The Binary Companion or 'Nemesis' theory asserts that a yet-to-be discovered companion to our Sun may actually exist. Recent observations of two nearby stars (assumed companions) show debris disks 'strikingly like the Kuiper Belt int the outer part of our Solar System'. The Binary Research Institute site is devoted to the theory, and presents a concise introduction, list of evidence, and sample calculations in support of the theory. A fascinating read, although the physics and related calculations are not trivial." Has the 'unique theory on the internet' vibe to it, but interesting nonetheless.

How in the world...

[Anonymous Coward]

... could we possibly find the outer planets by observing their influence on the inner planets' orbits, if there were a freaking brown dwarf in the neighborhood that we didn't know about?

Something like that would've ruined Kepler's whole day.

BIG error in article summary

[MustardMan]

The summary states...

Recent observations of two nearby stars (assumed companions)

Whereas the space.com article states...

Each of the two disks has a sharp outer edge that might be caused by an unseen companion star

READ THAT AGAIN FOLKS - they are NOT assuming these two stars are companions. They are NOT a binary star system. They are simply two stars that have similar disks as our own solar system. They think a POSSIBLE cause for these disks MIGHT be an unseen companion, but NO unseen companion has been seen. This discovery leads NO MORE CREDIBILITY to the nemesis "theoory" whatsover - all it says is that there are other stars with similar structures to our own. The cause of this structure has not been observed.

I don't think so...

[PieSquared]

At the distances involved (in the outer reaches of the kupier belt, about a light year), I guess we wouldn't really notice anything but a brighter star, but I still don't really think this is a possibility. Do the math: v=sqrt(Gm/r) where G is 6.67*10^-11, m is the mass of our sun, and r is the distance between them... 1.21746415*10^-6 meters per second orbital velocity. That's about one meter every 9.5 earth years. Anyone else think that seems a bit... unlikley? Also, the of gravity between the earth and the sun is about 1000 times as strong as with another star of the sun's mass one light year away. I don't think such a system would be stable, as a large astroid passing close to one might well pull it enough out of "orbit," if you can call such a small speed "orbit," so that you'd notice it was no longer binary. For the record, at one AU distance, it would take the system 5.64701404*10^17 years for an orbit. That's like 10 order of magnitude longer then the sun's life span.

Re:cool!

[MustardMan]

Actually I am a physicst, and while I'm not an astronomer, I do work with "dynamics" on a fulltime basis.

Not to mention, all but one real astronomer also think this theory is ridiculous. The site linked is by an AMATEUR astronomer, not someone with a formal training in the hard sciences. I'm not contradicting a specialist, I'm contradicting a whackjob internet troll. No, not you - the guy with the binary solar system website.

Slashdot Horoscope!

[GodHammre]

With all this pseudoscience crap floating around on slashdot we should open a horoscope section. It would make sense. But in all seriousness there is a possibility of a binary companion, but, this site is nothing more than pseudoscience. It dresses up a crazy astrology theory with a little bit of modern scientific sounding language. Be careful about what you post.

Could someone explain what the hell this is about?

[JourneyExpertApe]

Are they suggesting that there may be a nearby star that astronomers have just failed to see for the past few millenia that we've been studying the sky? I thought the nearest star was light years away. Is it a very dim star? I don't get it!

Re:cool!

[zippthorne]

I would like to point out that, separate from this issue, amateur astronomers are quite capable and in some instances have equipment rivaling professional gear. IIRC, something like 50% of newly discovered bodies in the solar system are found by amateur astromers. Their huge number of eyes is an invaluable resource to the scientific community.

Tycho Brahe was an amateur astronomer.

Re:cool!

[MustardMan]

Yes I do realize binary star systems are not rare. Not detecting it by visible light is exactly WHY classical mechanics comes into play - all you're really doing is dealing with a bunch of forces that go like 1/r^2. Investigating it for the sake of completeness is certainly not folly - however the arguments on the website linked in the article are nonsense.

I can't find it again at the moment - but I saw somewhere that they implied that the inaccuracy of predictions in precession over time was a result of our current theories being flawed, and that the binary theory somehow magically removed this inaccuracy. This is an example of the utter bullshit that anyone with an understanding of nonlinear dynamics would notice immediately. You're dealing with a many-body system here. That's inherently chaotic. That means, it's exponentially sensitive to initial conditions. Therefore, as time goes on your results get worse and worse due to small measurement errors in your initial conditions. NO MODEL can remove this effect and still claim to use newtonian physics - the equations are nonlinear and involve more than three objects interacting - therefore the equations of motion are chaotic. Period.

OF COURSE YOU CAN GET MORE ACCURATE RESULTS WHEN YOU PUT IN AN IMAGINARY EXTRA OBJECT - you can TUNE the parameters of this object arbitrarily to try to fit the experimental data. If I collect a bunch of data from all kinds of experiments, I can easily find a tenth order polynomial and get a very accurate fit to the data. This is also completely meaningless because all those fit parameters have no physical meaning.

Re:cool!

[MustardMan]

Equipment and ability to catalog objects - yes, absolutely. Anyone with a little money and time has the capability to make an amazing discovery. They do NOT, however, have the intense mathematical training to rigorously support a THEORY about said discovery. That doesn't make their discovery any less significant, but making a discovery and arguing a theory are very different things.

Re:Internet bullshit pseudoscience

[arose]

Moral of the story; Read all of the post before getting stupid!

Don't, you'll have no excuse then!

Re:01000010011010010110111001100001011100100111100

[Anonymous Coward]

Web site converters are for pussies. Here's a python version. Replace the underscores with space; slashcode doesn't handle ecode properly. Run it and just paste the binary goop at it.

#!/usr/bin/env python
import sys

x=''.join(sys.stdin.read().split())
for i in range(0, len(x), 8):
_t = 0
_for c in x[i:i+8]:
__t <<= 1
__t += int(c)
_sys.stdout.write(chr(t))

print

Or if you prefer, here's a C version. It's actually more robust, since it skips characters that aren't 0 or 1:

#include <stdio.h>
main()
{
int c, ch = 0, i = 0;
while ((c = getchar()) != EOF) {
if (c != '0' && c != '1') continue;
ch = (ch<<1) | (c == '1');
if (++i == 8) {
fputc(ch, stdout);
ch = i = 0;
}
}
putchar('\n');
}