> Sometime in the next 2000 years, the Sun is expected to leave a local cloud of gas and dust. After that, it may enter the G cloud. If it is denser, it would squash the protective magnetic bubble of the heliosphere, potentially exposing the Solar System to a barrage of cosmic rays.
Mostly surprised that I hadn't heard more about this. 2000 years is practically tomorrow in cosmological time!
A little more here:
I’m assuming our solar system has moved through various interstellar mediums throughout history, and from reading above it sounds non-trivial. Is it? Do we know anything about how this may have influenced the development of Earth?
Learning this gives me a very “oh my god we’re hurtling through space!” feeing that I haven’t felt in a long time.
That seems highly exaggerated. The Wikipedia article you mentioned is more sober:
> The Local Interstellar Cloud's potential effects on Earth are greatly diminished by the solar wind and the Sun's magnetic field.
A change in the density of the near interstellar medium would shift the heliopause, but it would require a massive increase in density to move it from where the Voyager probes are now to somewhere close to the inner solar system where it could have a noticeable impact.