Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Nearby Star Is Sun's Long-Lost Sibling (syfy.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the blast-from-the-past dept.

The Bad Astronomer writes: A nearby star, HD 186302, was almost certainly born from the same cloud of gas the Sun was 4.6 billion years ago. Astronomers have found it has an almost identical chemical composition as the Sun, is on a similar orbit around the Milky Way, and has the same age (within uncertainties). Interestingly, it's only 184 light years away, implying statistically many more such stars are waiting to be discovered.

56 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Many stars are closer by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

    Many stars are closer, e.g. alpha centauri 21 (4.3 ly). Wouldn't be logical to find (/search) similar stars closer than 184 ly?

    --
    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    1. Re:Many stars are closer by tonique · · Score: 4, Informative

      Perhaps, but not necessarily. In 4.5 billion years since its formation, the Sun and the solar system have gone round the Galaxy many times. There has been plenty of time for the stars formed at the same time and place to drift apart.

    2. Re:Many stars are closer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      About 19 times, if you want to call that "many". Your actual point remains valid though, 4.6 billion years is plenty of time to drift a couple hundred light years.

    3. Re:Many stars are closer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      More specifically, we're about 26,490 ly from the center of the milky way, so over (I calculate) 20 orbits we've traveled ~3.3 million ly in 4.6 billion years around the center of the Milky Way. So, a shift of 186 ly is ~0.006% over 4.6 billion years*. As the article states, though, with an average distribution of ~1,000 stars on a 166,441 ly orbit you'd expect 166 ly between stars (and hence a shift of ~50% at the extreme). It's little wonder factoring in the many other gas clouds form star clusters of a similar nature we'd see a lot more close stars from other them than one of our "sibling" stars (unless we were a binary system).

      * This presumes it's been slowly shifting over that time and didn't lap us one or more times.

    4. Re:Many stars are closer by meglon · · Score: 2

      You also have that star forming clouds/regions can be quite large from the get go. The Orion Molecular Cloud Complex is hundreds of light years in diameter, so depending on the initial size of our formation cloud, there might have been no drift at all needed for their current positioning.

      --
      Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
    5. Re:Many stars are closer by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 2

      Sure. But if this one has a watery planet our plants can probably grow there if life hasn't already evolved on it.

      As far as we know we can't live without our plants.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    6. Re:Many stars are closer by djinn6 · · Score: 1

      Water is probably the most common molecule in the universe. Finding planets with water is easy. Finding one without any toxic chemical that plants can't stand is much harder.

    7. Re:Many stars are closer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      +1 Informative, -1 Flamebait.

      Net: 0 mod points for you.

    8. Re:Many stars are closer by sg_oneill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think in general evolution takes care of the toxic chemical part. Theres not a lot life can't adapt to, given time. Hell earth prior to life would have been toxic as hell to us. But given a bunch of billions of years, all the shitty stuff has been broken up and repurposed, and what can't be, adapted to and shuffled around.

      The more pertient issues I suspect are geography, radiation and heat, and a good old dose of random luck.

      --
      Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
    9. Re:Many stars are closer by bobbied · · Score: 2

      Water is probably the most common molecule in the universe. Finding planets with water is easy. Finding one without any toxic chemical that plants can't stand is much harder.

      Well, apart from the relative abundance of H2O vrs H2..... Finding planets with water is fairly easy, but finding planets with abundant LIQUID surface water, that seems to be quite a bit more difficult.

      Earth is pretty unique among planets. Possibly one of a kind, perhaps not. But it's clear that rocky wet planets which are not too hot, not too cold and have the right amount of gravity, atmosphere etc, are not in every solar system.

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
    10. Re:Many stars are closer by vtcodger · · Score: 1

      the Sun and the solar system have gone round the Galaxy many times. There has been plenty of time for the stars formed at the same time and place to drift apart.

      Sort of? This is **REALLY** beyond my pay grade. But I think the situation may be that small differences in the velocity vectors of stars formed close together cause the stars to diverge as the stars move around the galactic center until their mutual distance reaches a maximum at a point (sort of) opposite their starting points relative to the galactic center. Then they converge toward their original relationships as the stars rotate back to their original position with respect to the galactic center. It's really hard to describe and I may be dead wrong.

      **IF** that's the case (big IF), the distance between the stars depends not only on how fast the stars were moving apart when they formed, but on where they are in their orbits around the galactic center.

      --
      You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
    11. Re:Many stars are closer by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 4, Informative

      Earth is pretty unique among planets.

      As opposed to ugly unique? Normally, "unique" does not require modifiers other than "nearly" - "nearly unique" might make sense. But not "pretty unique".

      Also, are you using a sample size of one solar system for your "pretty unique" analysis? If you are, you might want to consider the evidence that Mars had liquid water (and may still, underground), and several moons have liquid water under the surface. Hardly unique, even in this solar system....

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    12. Re:Many stars are closer by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

      There has been plenty of time for the stars formed at the same time and place to drift apart.

      Maybe they should sign up for a social media account. It would allow them to get closer again.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    13. Re:Many stars are closer by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 4, Informative

      TL;DR

      Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    14. Re:Many stars are closer by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      NEXT! - The Slashdot Nazi /Seinfeld

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    15. Re:Many stars are closer by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      So what you're saying is that Earth's properties are a pretty big coincidence...

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    16. Re:Many stars are closer by tonique · · Score: 1

      I'm no expert of stellar movements either.But it is my understanding that it's quite like you described: small differences in velocity vectors mean the stars' paths diverge. Sensitivity to initial conditions, aka. deterministic chaos.

    17. Re:Many stars are closer by bobbied · · Score: 2

      So we get the grammar police AND a "you are dumb" argument together?

      My point is that planets like Earth are rare, at least as far as we can tell by observing our galactic neighborhood. There are specific characteristics which are unusual, including the amount of water, the size of our moon, the magnetic field strength, our distance to our star in relation to it's size, and even the size of the planet are all keys in developing and sustaining life as we know it.

      How rare is this? We simply do not know for sure, but we can be pretty sure it's nowhere near 1 in 8 but many order of magnitudes less likely. 1 in a million? 1 in a trillion? Maybe even totally unique. The issue here is we cannot directly observe "earth like" planets much less tell if there is life there and this fact isn't changing anytime soon. Any "estimates" here are pure supposition at this point.

      So, yes, earth is "pretty unique"... By which I mean, could possibly be unique, or possibly not. I know folks make claims both ways, I'm just not ready to make such a determination based on the evidence we currently have..

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
    18. Re:Many stars are closer by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      You are making the same argument that creationists make when they claim that the anthropic principle is proof of divine intervention. What’s really happening is that we are naturally selected for the checmical makeup of our planet.

    19. Re:Many stars are closer by dryeo · · Score: 1

      Besides all you mention, the fact that the Earth seems to have been quite stable over 4.5 billion years is likely a rarity. Based on our sample size of one, it seems to take billions of years for complex life to evolve and the Earth has remained mostly at temperatures etc that allow liquid water on the surface, even as the Sun has increased its output by 25% or so. The Sun has also stayed in the habitable zone of the galaxy for the same time.
      The rare Earth hypothesis, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    20. Re:Many stars are closer by dryeo · · Score: 1

      The Earth has also been remarkably stable over its lifetime, having liquid water on the surface for most of its history apparently. Evolution seems slow and takes time.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    21. Re:Many stars are closer by RockDoctor · · Score: 2

      I make that about 7000 miles/ year on average dispersion velocity. I've had cars that travel faster than that. Actually, I don't think I've had a car which didn't travel faster than that, on average, over a year.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
    22. Re:Many stars are closer by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      You : Mars had liquid water (and may still, underground), and several moons have liquid water under the surface

      These are

      GP : planets with abundant LIQUID surface water

      ??

      There is a problem of coverage here. Out of the relatively small areas of the sky surveyed, to a quite shallow depth of survey, with major biases towards non-Sun-like stellar systems in the search methods, we have not found an Earth-a-like.

      But we have found a number of somewhat similar systems.

      And there are literally billions of un-surveyed systems in the galaxy.

      While we haven't found an Earth-alike system, it's fairly safe to conclude that they are out there. It's as unsure as the prevalence of unfocussed video cameras and gorilla suits in Oregon being a good predictor of at least one Bigfoot hoaxer in America.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
    23. Re:Many stars are closer by Bengie · · Score: 1

      "Many" is a quasi-relative word that indicates "a large number". The "relative" part is in what context do we mean "large". A large number relative to other stars or relative to commonly used human numbers? Relative to other stars, it's pretty much on par, meaning it's not a large number, so "not many".

  2. Re:Just Great ... by Tablizer · · Score: 2

    Great - now we'll have to invite them along for the holidays :(

    Just tell them about Uranus and they'll stay away.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  3. Re:What's inside a black hole? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Degenerate matter, not unlike your typical /. poster.

    CAPTCHA: aberrant

  4. Re:Woops by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    closest star is Alpha Centauri.
    Yet from what I can infer they're not from the same gas cloud.

    Nor is AC moving in the same orbit as us around the Milky Way. Due to the kinematics of our different orbits, Alpha Centauri is moving closer relative to us and in 30,000 years will will start moving further apart.

    With HD186302, we're never get any closer and it will continue to drift away from us. The hundreds of light-years of distance have been accumulated over the last 4 billion years, at that time scale we're not really moving apart that quickly.

    something smells fishy here. :-D

    Yes, your grasp on Newtonian physics.

  5. Re:What's inside a black hole? by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Funny

    Stuff that used to be outside a black hole.

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  6. Re:Just Great ... by reboot246 · · Score: 1

    Tell 'em to leave early or they'll be very, very late!

  7. 4.6 billion by zoid.com · · Score: 1

    What happened 4.6 billion years ago?

    --
    Zoid.com
    1. Re:4.6 billion by Dasher42 · · Score: 1

      We were clouds and dust bunnies, son. All the interstellar dust just lumped together around a swirl of cloud that got squished a bit from a star having a hiccup which smooshed the dust grains together. That's what they mean we're made of star stuff. It's actually dust bunnies. Rocks come later.

    2. Re:4.6 billion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      That's what they mean we're made of star stuff. It's actually dust bunnies.

      With those dust bunnies being the remnants of previous stars who have ran their lifecycle and went nova or something, scattering heavier elements around.

      There are elements in our body which could only exist because they were created in earlier stars.

      I just wish the drooling idiots who think the world was 6000 years old would understand that, if their god exists, he created a universe far more vast and amazing than their little pea brains can comprehend, and that it's not limited by their own stupidity.

    3. Re: 4.6 billion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The drooling idiots tend to be much more pleasant to be around then the condescending atheists. Your post is an excellent example of why.

    4. Re: 4.6 billion by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      The drooling idiots tend to be much more pleasant to be around then the condescending atheists.

      Have you tried doing the condescending atheists first?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    5. Re:4.6 billion by RockDoctor · · Score: 3, Informative

      What happened 4.6 billion years ago?

      About the same as 4 billion years ago, and 5 billion years ago - every year around 3 solar masses of interstellar medium were turned into stars, most of which were red dwarfs (and still are) though a couple of times a decade a star with a sun-like mass gets made. More rarely, larger stars would get formed.

      TFA has no implication that anything particularly unusual was happening then. At this moment, the portion of the Milky Way visible to us (maybe one tenth of it), has several hundred open clusters of the form which they are suggesting the Sun and HD186302 once shared.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
    6. Re:4.6 billion by ConceptJunkie · · Score: 1

      Fortunately, the young Earth creationists are a tiny fraction of believers. The rest of us are in wonder at the vast and amazing universe that God created.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
    7. Re:4.6 billion by ConceptJunkie · · Score: 1

      Randomly hating on Christianity is very popular, but I don't think it's been edgy since people were nailing theses to cathedral doors.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
  8. Sedate by nagora · · Score: 4, Funny

    I make that about 27mph on average, so this star could move around town without getting a speeding ticket. Not least because it would obliterate the town and the whole planet.

    --
    "Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
  9. Meanwhile ... by petes_PoV · · Score: 4, Funny

    ... on star HD 186302 an almost identical news report has been published.

    --
    politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
    1. Re: Meanwhile ... by bn-7bc · · Score: 1

      A news report on a star, wow som gardy individuals, no solid surfaceand a rather high temp, joking asside you may be right

    2. Re:Meanwhile ... by ConceptJunkie · · Score: 1

      Their Earth is exactly like ours except they gave Belgium a loss obscene name.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
  10. Which ones? by AndyKron · · Score: 1

    More stars to be discovered? We can see distant galaxies. What stars nearby are waiting to be discovered?

  11. Sun logo by _merlin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What the hell - now we get the Sun (as in the company that began as Stanford University Network) logo on stories about Sol? That's even worse than the DEC logo on stories about "digital" things. It isn't even that long ago that Sun was an independent company - surely the editors have memories longer than a decade?

    1. Re:Sun logo by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Indeed, both instances are messed-up. I mean, wrong logos attached to stories? Extremely easy-to-spot duplicate stories?

      The more of these problems pop up, the more I think there's no one left at the wheel and everything is script-driven around here.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    2. Re:Sun logo by Gavagai80 · · Score: 1

      Click on the Sun Microsystems logo and brings up a list of articles including "Ford Patents a Way To Remove 'New Car Smell'" and "Amazon Warehouse Collapse in Baltimore Leaves Two Dead". Which don't even have the Sun logo on them, they just happen to contain the word 'sun' buried in the text.

      It's not as if humans have a better track record at /. though. Machine editors could never foul up as badly, it'd be too easy for a script to prevent dupes and remember to include story links and so forth.

      --
      This space intentionally left blank
    3. Re:Sun logo by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      They are trolling you, and it worked. Well done, Slashdot!

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  12. Re:What's inside a black hole? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

    That's a stupid question. - "Starfleet admiral" Patrick

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
  13. Re:What's inside a black hole? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

    You win the Internet for today, my good sir.
    Please take care of it and don't drop it! The elders would not be amused.

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
  14. Re:What's inside a black hole? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

    Really? I thought it was plates.

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
  15. Sun sibling? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

    Does it also have an Earth sibling, too?

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
    1. Re:Sun sibling? by helpfulcorn · · Score: 1

      Another Earth, a 2011 movie, came to mind for me. That movie seemed much longer than it really was.

  16. solar systems' half sister by epine · · Score: 1

    What does it take to upgrade this to the solar system's twin? Or will these solar-twin systems forever remain half sisters?

  17. Re:Woops by arth1 · · Score: 2

    seriously though,
    closest star is Alpha Centauri.

    Alpha Centauri isn't a star; it is a system comprising the stars Alpha Centauri A (Rigil Kentauris) and Alpha Centauri B (Toliman), with the dwarf Proxima Centauri orbiting the two at a great distance. And Proxima Centauri is currently the closest star.

  18. Abby Norma by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    It's in the constellation of Norma,

    Name the star Abby, then we have Abby Norma.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  19. Re:Woops by scottrocket · · Score: 1

    Woosh, nice pedantry you did there.

    Until I was eight years old, I didn't know there was an A and a B - then I found out about Proxima! imo, the parent was being helpfully informative without being pejorative. Nice GP reference to HHGTTG, though.

  20. Re:Timely, yet again by scottrocket · · Score: 1

    I for one would like to welcome slashdot to last week or perhaps even the week before, when I first read about this. Welcome!

    Of course, it's not like I should be surprised, it happens so often.

    Well /. itself will never win the frosty piss award, but that's not necessarily a bad thing: It gives the rest of us a chance to read it somewhere else, possibly the original source(s) and to ruminate well before posting. Oh yeah, and to comment on /. tardiness - hopefully just for fun.