No influence of passing stars on paleoclimate reconstructions over the past 56 million years

Fuente: arXiv
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Zeebe, Richard E., Hernandez, David M.
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866908405612937216
author Zeebe, Richard E.
Hernandez, David M.
author_facet Zeebe, Richard E.
Hernandez, David M.
contents Passing stars (also called stellar flybys) have notable effects on the solar system's long-term dynamical evolution, injection of Oort cloud comets into the solar system, properties of trans-Neptunian objects, and more. Based on a simplified solar system model, omitting the Moon and the Sun's quadrupole moment J2, it has recently been suggested that passing stars are also an important driver of paleoclimate before ~50 Myr ago, including a climate event called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (~56 Myr ago). In contrast, using a state-of-the-art solar system model, including a lunar contribution and J2, and random stellar parameters (>400 simulations), we find no influence of passing stars on paleoclimate reconstructions over the past 56 Myr. Even in an extreme flyby scenario in which the Sun-like star HD 7977 (m = 1.07 M_Sun) would have passed within ~3,900 au about 2.8 Myr ago (with 5% likelihood), we detect no discernible change in Earth's orbital evolution over the past 70 Myr, compared to our standard model. Our results indicate that a complete physics model is essential to accurately study the effects of stellar flybys on Earth's orbital evolution.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_10158
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle No influence of passing stars on paleoclimate reconstructions over the past 56 million years
Zeebe, Richard E.
Hernandez, David M.
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Geophysics
Passing stars (also called stellar flybys) have notable effects on the solar system's long-term dynamical evolution, injection of Oort cloud comets into the solar system, properties of trans-Neptunian objects, and more. Based on a simplified solar system model, omitting the Moon and the Sun's quadrupole moment J2, it has recently been suggested that passing stars are also an important driver of paleoclimate before ~50 Myr ago, including a climate event called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (~56 Myr ago). In contrast, using a state-of-the-art solar system model, including a lunar contribution and J2, and random stellar parameters (>400 simulations), we find no influence of passing stars on paleoclimate reconstructions over the past 56 Myr. Even in an extreme flyby scenario in which the Sun-like star HD 7977 (m = 1.07 M_Sun) would have passed within ~3,900 au about 2.8 Myr ago (with 5% likelihood), we detect no discernible change in Earth's orbital evolution over the past 70 Myr, compared to our standard model. Our results indicate that a complete physics model is essential to accurately study the effects of stellar flybys on Earth's orbital evolution.
title No influence of passing stars on paleoclimate reconstructions over the past 56 million years
topic Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Geophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.10158