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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."
What do we know about that star and its surroundings? Is it likely to have inhabitable planets or is it bathed by lethal radiation from neighboring novas?
How long before we can actually check these stars for Earth-like planets? Last I heard, we now had the ability to detect planets slightly smaller than Jupiter. Will we find, or even see, an inhabitable planet within a few decades?
"... and that they are complaining over a 12-degree difference."
Who's complaining?
Observation != complaint.
for my 2 pence, this twin bit is just bunkum
They are 0.3 billion years different in age (presumably USian billions)
Which is almost 10% of their total age, that's like your human twin being born when you are 8 years old but you both weigh the same!
It is a bad analogy.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
does anyone here know what advances would be necessary to send probes & recover data about nearby star systems? Ion drives seem to be moving in the right direction, to use a phrase, but would they be sufficient in longevity & speed to make a multi-light year journey? And what sort of remote communication would be possible at such distances?
A corollory to this is, does anyone know what (if any) systems the Voyager spacecraft are going to encounter, and when?
What do we know about that star and its surroundings? Is it likely to have inhabitable planets...
As cool as it is to find a star that's a twin to ours, it's incredibly unlikely that we'll find a planet even remotely similar to Earth.
For one thing, the article notes that 18 Sco is 4.2 billion years old, while Sol is 4.5 billion years old. If everything else were exactly equal, it would be like stepping back 300 million years back in time. A quick Google finds that one of the more complex forms of life found 300e6 years ago on this planet was the Velvet Worm -- not a species known for its technology.
But even that is unlikely, given the Earth's unusual formation. This planet has an unusual mix of minerals on its crust, plus plate tectonics to keep them mixed, and an iron core that's magnetic enough to keep out the sun's ionizing radiation. Plus, a moon big enough to stir up the oceans, and a tilt to generate asymmetrical solar heating... and all that apparently due to a one-in-a-million collision between a proto-Earth and a Mars-sized planet not long after Sol formed.
I can't find the quote, but someone calculated the odds of finding another sentient species as tiny. It's not that it doesn't develop elsewhere in the galaxy... there are billions of chances, so surely more than one came up all 7s. It's just that the distances are so vast, and the chances of favorable development so small, that entire civilizations (or species) could rise and fall by the time their transmissions reach another civilization's satellite dishes.
But still, at less than 50 light years, it would only take a few hundred years to get there and back. Are the generation ships ready yet?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.