I have heard all kinds of stuff about this star, repots that Barnard's star at almost 6 light-years away, other writings said it was thought to harbour planets, another said it is moving at us around 55 miles per second, other writings say it has a motion of over 160 kilometers per second and will some in one hundred years pass Alpha Centauri I have read it has a luminosity of about 1/2500 that of the Sun. Does anyone have any more info on this strange star ?

from the website attached to this forum

and from an old thread: http://www.badastronomy.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=48218

if you use the search function on the website you'll end up with more info.

edited to add: if you click on the link in Chip's post from the abover thread you will find loads of info on Barnard's star. i wouldn't worry about it hitting us, though.

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Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? -- Groucho Marx

There is a red dwarf star called Gliese 70 that will enter our Oort Cloud in several million years. It will only be as bright as Betelgeuse is now, though. The star will disturb the comet cloud and will send thousands of comets into the inner solar sytem. As for Barnard's Star, I wouldn't worry. :wink:

http://www.solstation.com/stars2/gl710.htm

Gliese 710 is expected to come within 1.1 light-years (0.34 pc) of Sol in less than 1.4 million years, but astronomers do not expect it to perturb the Solar System's Oort Cloud sufficiently to create a substantial increase in the long-period comet flux at Earth's orbit

1.1 light years is pretty close as stars go, but still a really long way off in human terms. There is absolutely no danger of it hitting us. Of course there's no danger of Bernard's star hitting us either. Whole galaxies can collide without any stars actually hitting each other. The real danger, as Brady Yoon pointed out, is from all the little rocks that stars drag around in their wake.

Would there be only a small increase in long period comets or a true comet storm, billions upon billions entering?

Billions? No way. There aren't billions out there. Right? Well I guess if you include objects the size of grains of sand there might be billions. But there's no way there are that many planet killers out there.

Besides, for every comet whose orbital velocity is slowed, sending it into the inner solar system, there is an equal chance that a comet's orbital velocity is increased, sending it away from the solar system.

And one last point, if you slowed a comet almost to a complete stop, meaning it was going to fall directly inward... in other words, if you affected it in such a way that it came at us by the most direct path, it would still take decades for it to fall all the way into the inner solar system.

This is going to happen a million years from now. In a million years, if we can protect ourselves from a comet that gives us a decade's warning, I think it's safe to say that nature has selected us for extinction.