Intelligent life wiped out in a binary system with a neutron star?

For the purposes of my story, I have created the following setting.

An Earth-like planet orbits a binary star system made up of a Sun-like star and a neutron star. For the majority of time (hundreds of thousands of years), it orbits the Sun-star, but occasionally, it gets "snatched up" by the neutron star. During these periods, the planet's orbit is erratic and unpredictable - sometimes it's quite far from the star and everything freezes over; at other times it gets so close, the gravitational forces and radiation wreak havoc down on the surface.

Could intelligent life have evolved during one of these "stable" periods (when orbiting the main sequence star + "erratic" orbits around the neutron star that happen to be livable), only to be later wiped out when the planet got too close to the neutron star? If so, what kind of life would have evolved in this setting? If not, what can I change about the setting to make it feasible for intelligent life to have evolved (and later, to have been wiped out by the neutron star)?

posted over 5 years ago

marmel‭

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