Back in 2015, a group of scientists said that a red dwarf star named Scholz came within galactic inches of our solar system.
At its closest approach, the binary pair — known together as "Scholz's star" — passed by the sun at a distance of less than 1 light-year, according to a study of the binary's velocity, researchers said. One light-year is the distance light travels in a year — about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers). The nearest star to the sun, Proxima Centauri, is 4 light-years from Earth.
Scientists made the Scholz's-star discovery by measuring its tangential velocity (the motion across the sky) as well as its radial velocity (speed away from Earth).
New research seems to support this theory, reports Space.com
The new study bolsters the 2015 analysis with a different type of evidence. A research team led by Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, of the Complutense University of Madrid, analyzed 339 known solar system bodies with hyperbolic orbits — paths through space that are V-shaped, rather than circular or elliptical.
Objects on hyperbolic orbits could theoretically have come from interstellar space, just like ‘Oumuamua, the first known solar system visitor born around another star. But they could also be natives nudged onto weird tracks by gravitational interactions with the sun or some of its planets. And denizens of the Oort Cloud — a frigid ring far from the sun that's home to trillions of comets — could even be "perturbed" by the Milky Way's disk, or wandering stars that get too close.
Oumuamua was unique for scientists as they were able to actually watch this alien body as it zipped by our neighborhood.