A team of German
astronomers have come forward with an astounding observation. A star, now
termed Scholz’s Star after its discoverer, had come very close to the solar
system around 70,000 years ago. It flew past the outermost reaches of the solar
system called Oort Cloud which is a vast region of space full of stellar debris
and is the breeding ground of comets which are nudged by celestial objects
whizzing past through the cloud and which then tumble onwards to the Sun by its
gravitational tug in a periodical orbit. Astronomers say the comets the star
had dislocated in its wake might not reach the sun for many more thousands or
even millions of years to come. The star is categorized as a Red Dwarf, meaning
the size was very small, and it hurtled past us at a speed of 2,88,000 kmph
which is four times the speed of a normal celestial body. It had come nearly
0.8 light years away from the Sun, which means that it reached nearly one-fifth
of the distance to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star at 4.2 light years away.
Dwarf stars are difficult to see with the unaided eye, but many such stars
flare occasionally, even up to 4000 times its normal light intensity. If such
was the case, it would’ve been visible on the prehistoric face of the earth.
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| Scholz's Star in artistic concept |
It is deeply
exhilarating to contemplate the feelings that rose on sighting this new dot of
bright red in prehistoric people. The star might have put in an appearance at
the intersection of two crucial events in human history – the migration out of
Africa and the development of speech. Probably, some inquisitive child might
have spotted this unusually bright speck of crimson light on a sky unencumbered
with smoke and industrial particulates. With childish naiveté, the little girl
might have pointed it to her little brother and possibly to her mother, who
would’ve been busy preparing for the long night in an era when artificial lighting
was still several millennia ahead. Her father would probably be outside the
cave socializing with his fellows and discussing on the hunting strategies to
be followed in the new area in which they have arrived on the arduous trek out
of Africa in humanity’s greatest ever bid to conquer the world. The girl might
have uttered some sounds that was somehow comprehensible to her parents and
siblings, since man had just reached the critical stage in his evolution at
which speech developed. The guttural sounds of apes gradually or more probably
rather suddenly by geological standards, gave way to meaningful speech. Isn’t
it wonderful to visualize a little primitive human family looking uncomprehendingly
and with a little anxiety watching this portent of unknown events to occur?
Religion had not taken root in human societies at that time, as the concept of
an omnipotent deity required the development of the ability to produce
meaningful spoken words. That family might have just wondered with a tinge of
apprehension about how their future could be correlated with the appearance of
a little red dot in the evening sky.
And, would they
have spared a thought for the man who would not be born for the next 70,000
years from that moment, but would think and write about them in a medium they couldn’t
even dream about?
