I'm no expert (and have not read the full article, just about half of it), but could an object like this affect Earth when it's orbit gets closer to the sun? I mean anything, from causing movements in Earth's crust or below, influencing tides, carrying massive pieces of rock in its trail etc.?
If I remember correctly from the article, if this object were capable of perturbing Earth in any significant way, then we would be under much greater threat from Jupiter and Saturn, which are at least order of magnitude closer to us at any given time. Gravitation is a very weak force, and it scales as the inverse square of the distance between two objects. An order of magnitude reduction in distance would multiply the force by roughly 100 times. Thus, we would see these effects all the time as a result of our proximity to Jupiter and Saturn.
What was this nonsense I remember from gradeschool about planets aligning having a gravitation effect on the sun such that it'd start spewing fireballs at earth? Of course nothing happened. The amount of gravitational force from a mountain as you drive by it has more of an effect than the planets. It's kinda like, how does astrology affect us again? Can you be precise? I mean, other than for entertainment as by its own standard it's a real thing.
