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Astronomers Find Sun's Twin

mroch writes "Space.com is reporting that astronomers may have found a solar twin -- a star almost exactly like our own Sun. Interesting tidbits from the article include: "The star, 18 Scorpii, sits about 47.5 light-years away in the constellation Scorpio, and has long-been suspected of being Sun-like. [...] The star burns slightly hotter than the Sun, at 5,789 degrees Kelvin compared to 5,777 degrees. It appears to rotate slightly faster than the Sun, taking 23 days to complete a rotation rather than the Sun's 25." It boggles my mind to think that we can measure temperature that exactly from 279,000,000,000,000 miles away, and that they are complaining over a 12-degree difference."

5 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Re:They use spectrometry to measure the heat by LittleBigLui · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah, there's much difference between a delta of 12 degrees kelvin and 12 degrees celcius. OTOH, you USians (and UKians?) with your funny measurements probably measure temperatures in ounces, feet or hands or something. :)

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  2. Re:They use spectrometry to measure the heat by Bazzargh · · Score: 3, Funny

    Really, you shouldn't use the word 'degree' with the work 'Kelvin' as in the case used in the Story. It's preferable to write simply 5789 Kelvin.

    Since we're nitpicking... its kelvin, not Kelvin.

  3. Re:Measuring temperature at great distance by !the!bad!fish! · · Score: 4, Funny

    ... no disturbing medium ...
    What like this?

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  4. Re:Interseteller Probes by jhoffoss · · Score: 3, Funny

    What I want to know is would it be possible to fly backwards around the sun faster than the speed of light and travel back in time?

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  5. Re:50 closest, closest matches to the sun by Red+Rocket · · Score: 4, Funny


    Binary geeks can count to 1,023 on their fingers :)

    Lots of people do this. Just the other day, a guy in traffic showed me the how he could convert the decimal number 4 into binary. :)

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