The sun’s hidden twin launches killer comets at Earth every 26 million years, and the bad brother may have wiped out the dinosaurs, according to a new theory. And tape the windows: UC Berkeley physicist Richard Muller estimates that the next bombardment of the theoretical twin nicknamed “Nemesis” is just 12 million years away. Muller, a professor emeritus of physics at Berkeley, theorizes that the red dwarf floats on the outskirts of the solar system and hurls large icy comets toward us. The sun may have its own Wario that fires killer comets at Earth every 26 million years. NASA/JPL-Caltech Nemesis, according to Muller, reflects the sun as the two orbit a shared center of gravity at the same time, almost as if they are tethered, which explains exactly why no one has seen the strange star before, according to Universe Today. Astronomers often detect nearby stars by the way they crawl across the sky, but what makes Nemesis unique, long hypothesized, is that the star barely moves, according to theories. “Nemesis,” according to Muller, reflects the sun as the two orbit a shared center of gravity in unison, almost as if they were tethered. James Keivom It also has the perfect hiding place, Muller claimed, as the star lies near the plane of the solar system, where it is far away and too dark to see with the naked eye and is buried among countless other stars. But Muller theorized that every 26 million years, Nemesis makes its closest pass through the Oort Cloud, a giant layer of trillions of icy objects at the edge of the solar system. According to Muller, this triggers a comet shower that can last a million years. The theory dates back to a 1982 study that found marine extinctions were spiking in a disturbingly constant 26-million-year cycle. Theoretically, a peak occurred 66 million years ago, when a space rock, said to be an asteroid, crashed into what is now Mexico and triggered a global catastrophe that wiped out the dinosaurs. Richard Muller, professor emeritus of physics at UC Berkeley. UC Berkeley But Walter Alvarez, the Berkeley geologist behind the impact theory, said scientists couldn’t distinguish between what hit Earth and killed the dinosaurs was a comet or an asteroid, the outlet reported. However, not everyone agrees, and a 2014 Penn State study of data from NASA’s WISE infrared telescope found no sign of the star. “The outer solar system probably does not contain a large gas giant planet, nor a small companion star,” astronomer Kevin Luhman, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, said at the time. But Muller insists there is no clear evidence against the theory, since the star is hidden.
