Facts about Nemesis
- 07
Binary star systems similar to what Nemesis would have been exist throughout the galaxy, yet no dormant stellar companion has ever been observed within 100,000 astronomical units of our Sun despite decades of infrared surveys.
- 06
In 1985, physicist Richard Muller proposed that Nemesis's 26-million-year orbital period matched the spacing of impact craters on Earth's Moon, suggesting correlated bombardment events across the inner solar system.
- 05
Critics of Nemesis pointed out that a brown dwarf or red dwarf companion would emit infrared radiation detectable by NASA's WISE satellite, which surveyed the entire sky between 2010 and 2011 without finding such an object.
- 04
Muller's Nemesis hypothesis predicted that gravitational perturbations from the unseen star would dislodge approximately 1 billion comets from the Oort Cloud toward the inner solar system.
- 03
Paleontologist David Raup's 1984 analysis of extinction patterns showed a statistically significant 26-million-year cycle, providing the primary empirical basis for Muller's Nemesis hypothesis.
- 02
Astronomical surveys from 2016 onward found no evidence supporting Nemesis's existence, with improved detection methods ruling out any undiscovered stellar companion within the theorized orbital parameters.
- 01
The hypothetical Nemesis star, proposed in 1984 by physicist Richard Muller, was theorized to orbit Earth's Sun every 26 million years and trigger mass extinction events.