A new study conducted by a team of Harvard researchers has suggested that there were two Suns in the solar system in the ancient past. Scientists made this assumption after analysing the anomalies in the outer edge of the solar system. Space scientists have long been puzzled about this crowded area beyond Neptune, as it does not match with the scientific models of how the galaxy was formed in the ancient days.
Mysteries surrounding Oort Cloud
Beyond Neptune, there lies the Oort cloud, a sphere of icy debris that accommodates more than 100 billion chunks of rocks and ice, which is far more than the scientific model predicts. Avi Loeb, who led this new research also speculate that there could be an unknown planet beyond Neptune, and its gravitational pull is tugging space debris into formation.
Scientists later tried to determine how the Oort cloud was formed in the solar system. Most of the scientific hypothesis suggests the fact that the Oort cloud was formed from the disk that made the planets. However, researchers reveal that it is hard to explain why the cloud contains so many objects if they came from the inner solar system, which in turn indicates that these space bodies might have reached the outer edge from the opposite direction.
Presence of Second Sun
Loeb and his fellow researcher Amir Siraj suggested that our sun in the solar system may have a twin and this star might have helped to pass debris from interstellar space which is now present in the crowded outer reached of the solar system. According to the researchers, the gravity of the sun was not powerful enough to drew so many objects, and a second star might have catalyzed the entire process.
Researchers suggested that this twin might have broken away from its orbit at one point in time, and it ended up in a completely different region in space. However, the influence of this star remains in the Oort cloud.
Loeb revealed that we could never find this second star as the Milky Way has rotated and has shifted too much since the separation of the twins.
