Moving stars
Meanwhile, a wandering star on its path through the Milky Way might get a bit closer to our sun, which means that it would interact with the rocky “Oort cloud” at the edge of the solar system, which is also the source of our comets. This can only lead to an increased chance of a huge comet hurtling to Warth.
In other words, another roll of the dice! The sun is following a path through the Milky Way that is taking us through more or less a ton of dense patches of interstellar gas. Now, we are within a less dense bubble made by a supernova.
The sun’s wind and solar magnetic field enhance the bubble-like region that surrounds our solar system, known as the heliosphere, which shields us from possible interaction with the interstellar medium.
When we leave this region in 20,000 to 50,000 years, depending on current observations and models, the Earth’s heliosphere might have less effect, which means that it would completely expose us. It might be possible to encounter increased climate change, which would make life more challenging for us, if not impossible actually.
