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.

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.

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?