This article irked me in blatant inaccuracies and poor quality. It mixes up the Nemesis and Tyche papers, and ends up sort compressing them down into a new mashup of garbage.
CHARACTERISTICS (from article)
Object type: Brown Dwarf or Gas Giant (straddling both theories)
Mass: 4 Jupiter Masses (consistent with Tyche, Nemesis is either a Red or Brown dwarf, thus 8 Jupiter Masses bare minimum)
Distance: 15,0000 AU (consistent with Tyche, Nemesis mean orbit is closer to 1 light year)
Orbital Period: 27 Million Years (consistent with Nemesis, Tyche is ~2 million years)
Explains: Mass Extinctions (reason for Nemesis, Tyche explains smaller batches of comets)
First Hypothesized: 1984 (date of Nemesis hypothesis, Tyche was 1999)
Mind numbing quote: "Tyche was first hypothesized as Nemesis"
If they were trying to get across they felt the Tyche paper was the next version of Nemesis, they did a remarkably poor job of it. And, they'd be wrong, to boot.
People have a hard enough time distinguishing theoretical objects that the press decides to cover. The 2012 crowd engages in this sort of mashup regularly, but then you can accuse them of doing it and point out the press release. But to have the actual news agency misrepresent these theoretical objects just makes it even worse.






