Newly discovered star came within one light-year of our sun 70,000 years ago

A red dwarf star and its brown dwarf companion came within one light-year of our sun just 70,000 years ago, a team of researchers from the US, Europe, Chile, and South Africa discovered.

The red dwarf star is called WISE J072003.20-084651.2, but is also known by the catchier name of Scholz's star. This star's trajectory points to it being within 1 light year (0.8 light years to be exact) around 70,000 years ago. Its companion is a brown dwarf with about six percent of the Sun's mass.

This is astronomically close and our closest neighbor star Proxima Centauri is 4.2 light years distant.

Researchers working on a study later published in Astrophysical Journal Letters say that it is the closest that another star has come to us, passing by at a distance of 5 trillion miles (8 trillion kilometers, or 52,000 astronomical units, or 0.8 light-years).

Lead author Eric Mamajek from the University of Rochester said that most stars this nearby show much larger tangential motion and the small tangential motion and proximity initially indicated that the star was most likely either moving towards a future close encounter with the solar system, or it had "recently" come close to the solar system and was moving away.

"Most stars this nearby show much larger tangential motion," Eric Mamajek, associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester, explained in a press release.

"The small tangential motion and proximity initially indicated that the star was most likely either moving towards a future close encounter with the solar system, or it had 'recently' come close to the solar system and was moving away," Mamjek added. "Sure enough, the radial velocity measurements were consistent with it running away from the Sun's vicinity -- and we realized it must have had a close flyby in the past."