Our Sun’s Sibling


It seems that astronomers have been on a quest to find the sun’s siblings, and were met with great success. In the constellation named for the mighty hero Hercules, far out in the vast reaches of space, lies the first star believed to have been born from the same cluster as our own. Dubbed HD 162826, this star is possibly only one of many cluster-mates shared by our sun.

And, because of the nature of such siblings when they were born, these two stars may well have swapped debris that eventually formed terrestrial worlds. And, as a previous study suggests, terrestrial worlds are one of the most likely to harbor extraterrestrial life. Thus, though the chances are quite slim, the possibility exists that one or more such worlds could contain alien lifeforms. This has astronomers hoping to find more of these cluster-mates, just in case.

Researchers at the University of Texas believe that the techniques they used for identifying HD 162826 as the sun’s sibling will help these questing astronomers to find more of the cluster’s stars further out in space. Said Ivan Ramirez, one of the astronomers who discovered the find, “We want to know where we were born. If we can figure out in what part of the galaxy the sun formed, we can constrain conditions on the early solar system. That could help us understand why we are here.”

Ramirez and his team identified the sun’s sibling by studying 23 stars sent in by astronomers around the globe as possible siblings, using high-resolution spectroscopy to examine their chemical make-up. They also studied the trajectory, orbit, and other dynamics to determine where these stars must have been, and where they were going now. The methods and findings concerning this star will be published in the June issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

Ironically, the McDonald Observatory has been studying HD 162826 for the past fifteen years, and therefore has a great deal of data already amassed concerning the sibling star. The McDonald observatory has proven to be quite useful in discovering and locating planets and stars over the years, using some of the most sophisticated equipment we possess in its never-ending search of the cosmos.

The sibling star and the sun itself are believed to have shared the same cloud of gas billions of years ago. They would have formed along with countless other stars and eventually the cluster would have spewed them out into space. Below is a video of what it may have looked like when our sun and its siblings formed.

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