A rogue star is now careening close to us!

Mention runaway or rogue stars these days and the usual suspects are not usually galactic but celluloid, such are the times we live in. However, there are more stars in heaven Horatio, with apologies to Shakespeare, than Khans in Bollywood. So, it should come as no surprise that a rogue star — some call it ‘free-range’ but that is ovoid-able — is now lurking just 20 light years away from our solar system. This cusp between a ‘brown dwarf’, or failed star, and a planet with 12 times the mass of Jupiter and no gravitational link to any system has been named SIMP J01365663+0933473. It could have just as well have been called OJ, especially since it is a big, hot, runaway star with a tremendous magnetic field. Luckily, with a Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope chasing it down the intergalactic superhighway, it certainly cannot escape further scrutiny.

Be that as it may, it is not the only celestial loiterer in our little corner of the universe with astronomers predicting earlier this year that another rogue star named Gliese 710 may have a rendezvous with us in 1.29 million years. Thankfully, there is no reason for urgent measures just yet though the expected date has been brought forward from the initially estimated time of 1.36 million years. None of today’s earthly species may be around to see that close encounter anyway.