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Nearby Star Is Sun's Long-Lost Sibling (syfy.com)
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.
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.
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.
Stuff that used to be outside a black hole.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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"
... 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
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.
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?
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"
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.
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