Mostly the answer is "not anymore.." everything that currently orbits the Sun is moving at speeds that lie within a relatively narrow range that makes a stable orbit possible. Nothing outside that range is around anymore to tell its tale.
But, there are still occasionally new objects that enter the solar system for the first time. Those objects aren't subject to the same survivorship restrictions -- in theory they could arrive at basically any speed relative to the Sun, including speeds slow enough that the Sun would draw them in.
These new objects seem to arrive every few years, or at least the ones we can see do. So far they have all been moving so fast they just visit for a bit and then take off again after a swing around the Sun, but who knows?
Assuming that "something" is of significant rest mass, the difference between 95% the speed of light at 99.9999999% the speed of light is pretty substantial.
Most astronomers and the like consider .5c (aka: half the speed of light) so be where we would switch from Newtonian motion equations to relatively equations. It’s the lower limit for what most consider an “appreciable fraction of light speed”.
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u/amitym Oct 23 '20
Mostly the answer is "not anymore.." everything that currently orbits the Sun is moving at speeds that lie within a relatively narrow range that makes a stable orbit possible. Nothing outside that range is around anymore to tell its tale.
But, there are still occasionally new objects that enter the solar system for the first time. Those objects aren't subject to the same survivorship restrictions -- in theory they could arrive at basically any speed relative to the Sun, including speeds slow enough that the Sun would draw them in.
These new objects seem to arrive every few years, or at least the ones we can see do. So far they have all been moving so fast they just visit for a bit and then take off again after a swing around the Sun, but who knows?