Didn’t we all have that “Parent Trap” fantasy, where we’d come across a long-lost sibling that was separated at birth? That dream didn’t go beyond a movie plot for the most of us, but it’s just come true for the Sun.
In a rare discovery, an international team of astronomers has found a star that was likely born in the same stellar nursery as our Sun. After analyzing the characteristics of thousands of stars in the Milky Way, the group is confident that they’ve not only found a solar sibling, but possibly a solar twin.
Named HD186302, the near-identical star is only the second of the Sun’s close relatives ever identified. The finding could help researchers understand the environment that the Sun and its siblings formed in, and possibly uncover habitable planets within the twin’s orbit.
The Sun sits in relative isolation now, but billions of years ago, it was ...
