Our solar system might be home to nearly one million aliens from another star system. These aliens are not life forms but space rocks, or asteroids, that belong to the triple star system Alpha Centauri. Scientists who made the revelation say that these asteroids are currently in the Oort cloud, but some of them may be able to infiltrate into the inner solar system.

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Alpha Centauri is around 4.3 light-years (38 trillion kilometres) away and according to a new study, if it ejects material equivalent to what our solar system releases, then nearly a million space rocks, some as large as 328 feet, could be residing in the solar system, more specifically the Oort Cloud. This region lies on the outskirts of our system.

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The Alpha Centauri system is moving closer to ours and scientists say that going by this trend, the amount of asteroids entering the solar system will increase over the next 28,000 years.

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"We were a little surprised to find that the amount of material from Alpha Centauri was not completely negligible," University of Western Ontario researcher Paul Wiegert told Space.com.

He adds that finding this material in the solar system is a surprise since the universe is vast and "perhaps no material from Alpha Centauri could reach us at all."

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Interstellar invaders in the solar system

What pushed Weigert and University of Western Ontario PhD student Cole Gregg to study the alien space rocks were two interstellar visitors -  Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov. 

Shaped like a cigar, Oumuamua caught the fascination of astronomers when it travelled through the inner solar system in 2017. The 2I/Borisov is a comet/asteroid hybrid which was discovered in 2019. 

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Both of them are trying to learn more about alien visitors that might be coming from interstellar space. They believe there are definitely more than just the two currently known interstellar visitors, Oumuamua and Comet Borisov. This would help them understand where the future interstellar visitors come from.

How are asteroids and comets ejected from Alpha Centauri?

They carried out a simulation of the solar system and Alpha Centauri that lasted for over 100 million years, which found that a significant number of objects can enter the solar system from the nearby star system.

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The gravitational interactions between the stars and the planets in Alpha Centauri disturb the orbits of smaller objects like asteroids and comets, causing them to enter our solar system. However, most of them get caught in the Oort Cloud. Those that manage to enter the interiors of the solar system are moving at quick speeds, and so never get caught in the gravitational pull of the sun.

"Because they have rather high speeds, they do not get gravitationally captured by our sun but instead simply pass through our system," Wiegart added.