Oort cloud

Editor’s note: New details about this fascinating object have emerged since we wrote this article – here's the latest update.

According to a new study, the impactor that smashed into Earth’s surface millions of years ago – causing the global extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs – may have originated from a vast sphere of icy debris that surrounds the solar system.

About 70,000 years ago, an interstellar interloper brushed past less than a light-year from us. A new study has found that the effects of this close encounter are still felt today, as the orbits of hundreds of comets and asteroids still bear the star’s gravitational influence.

In 1996, scientists discovered the strangest stone ever found. Nicknamed the Hypatia stone, it was later found to be extraterrestrial, but unlike any known kind of meteorite. A new study has deepened the mystery even further, finding that Hypatia could be interstellar or predate the Solar System.

​A new study using data from ESA's Gaia satellite has tracked the movement of more than 300,000 stars relative to the Sun, and discovered that some will pass close enough to disturb the vast cloud of comets that make up the Oort Cloud.

A new study carried out by Professor Michael Rampino of New York University suggests that dark matter may have had a part to play in the periodic mass extinction events that are known to have taken place throughout Earth's history.

An international team of astronomers from the US, Europe, Chile, and South Africa have identified a star system that most likely passed through the outer edge of our solar system at a distance of 0.8 light years some 70,000 years ago.

The European Space Agency's (ESA) unmanned Rosetta probe orbiting comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko is throwing new light on one of the fundamental questions in Earth's history – where did the oceans come from?