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."

Comments

Re:Measuring temperature at great distance

[KDan]

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.

Indeed. Go read up on spectrum analysis methods of measuring black body temperatures. It's fairly straightforward actually, because stars are perfect emitters/absorbers (aka "black bodies").

Daniel

Re:They use...: arbitrary names...

[Zangief]

You know, these arbitrary names come after greek words. They used these words to refer to small things, so scientists, centuries after them, use these words to refer to powers of ten.

If you are measuring in inches, you have to memorize arbitrary numbers, because there are 5280 inches in one mile, and 12 inches in a feet, which makes calculations cumbersome and prone to error.

Metric system is intuitive, because every unit is a power of ten of a meter. This is the only thing arbitrary.

Face it. Metric system r00lZ! Any other system sucks!!