cbusalex t1_itr53i5 wrote on October 25, 2022 at 6:17 PM

Reply to comment by incarnuim in If you lived on a planet in the center of the Milky Way would the nighttime be significantly brighter compared to Earth’s nighttime due to the larger concentration of stars? by bad_take_

> Why would stars 860 AU away preclude planets?

If 860 AU is the average distance between stars, and the stars are moving relative to each other, then over a long enough timeline most stars will have much closer encounters than that.

Gliese 710 is projected to pass within 0.1663 light-years of the sun within the next couple million years, 30 times closer than the 5 light-year average distance between stars in this neighborhood. If that sort of thing is typical, then you'd expect stars with an average distance of 860 AU to have occasional passes at only a few dozen AU.

incarnuim t1_itrh0jj wrote on October 25, 2022 at 7:33 PM

Possibly, but I personally don't know enough to posit the effects of that on planetary systems. Have any other stars passed that close to us over the past several million years? If not, then Gliese 710 may be an atypical event...