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The Lost Siblings of the Sun
Sky and Telescope ^ | 3/10/2009 | Alan MacRobert

Posted on 03/12/2012 3:32:13 PM PDT by U-238

Most stars are born in clusters rather than singly, and there’s plenty of evidence that the Sun was too.

For one thing, the material of the infant solar system (as preserved in the earliest meteorites) was enriched by fresh supernova debris from at least one very young, massive star (having 15 to 25 solar masses) that exploded less than 5 light-years away, no more than 2 million years after the Sun's formation. Today no such massive star exists within 300 light-years of the Sun. Clearly, the early solar system had stars close around it.

But that was 4.57 billion years ago. Where are the Sun’s cluster-mates now?

Some of them, it turns out, should remain surprisingly nearby. An analysis by Simon F. Portegies Zwart (University of Amsterdam) finds that the Sun’s birth cluster started off with about 500 to 3,000 solar masses and a diameter smaller than about 20 light-years — typical for open clusters. Evidence for the cluster's mass and size, Zwart writes, is preserved in the anomalous chemical abundances and structure of the solar system's Kuiper Belt — the realm of small, icy objects out beyond Neptune. Some of the Kuiper Belt's objects are dynamically "hot"; they were stirred up and scattered by the gravity of at least one nearby cluster star making a close pass in early days.

(Excerpt) Read more at skyandtelescope.com ...


TOPICS: Miscellaneous; Technical
KEYWORDS: astronomy; astrophysics; milkywaygalaxy; science; solarsystem; spacescience; starcluster; stars; stellarscience; sun; xplanets
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1 posted on 03/12/2012 3:32:18 PM PDT by U-238
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To: U-238
Where are the Sun’s cluster-mates now?

Off to college.

2 posted on 03/12/2012 3:41:17 PM PDT by UCANSEE2 (Lame and ill-informed post)
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To: UCANSEE2

leeching student loan benefits too!


3 posted on 03/12/2012 3:44:17 PM PDT by Brownie63
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To: U-238

bflr


4 posted on 03/12/2012 3:45:23 PM PDT by Captain Beyond (The Hammer of the gods! (Just a cool line from a Led Zep song))
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To: U-238

The Sun ate my baby.


5 posted on 03/12/2012 3:51:47 PM PDT by 1010RD (First, Do No Harm)
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To: U-238
Where are the Sun’s cluster-mates now? ...

Just have to ask the enemedia...


6 posted on 03/12/2012 3:55:28 PM PDT by C210N
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To: U-238
Most stars are born in clusters rather than singly

Remember these?


7 posted on 03/12/2012 3:56:57 PM PDT by freedumb2003 (Spoiler Alert! The secret to Terra Nova: THEY ARE ALL DEAD!!!)
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To: freedumb2003

Actually I do


8 posted on 03/12/2012 5:00:29 PM PDT by U-238
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To: SunkenCiv; KevinDavis

Ping


9 posted on 03/12/2012 5:04:58 PM PDT by U-238
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To: U-238; KevinDavis; annie laurie; Knitting A Conundrum; Viking2002; Ernest_at_the_Beach; Mmogamer; ..

Thanks U-238.

 
X-Planets
· join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic · subscribe ·
Google news searches: exoplanet · exosolar · extrasolar ·

10 posted on 03/12/2012 6:11:10 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him)
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To: All

Can we find the Sun’s relatives? Yes. By identifying stellar relatives via their proper motion, or apparent movement across our line of sight, their position in the sky, and their chemical signatures, which he likens to their stellar DNA. Such stars, would be roughly one solar mass (the size of the sun) or less and have chemical abundances similar to the sun.


11 posted on 03/12/2012 8:56:15 PM PDT by U-238
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To: All

http://iopscience.iop.org/1538-4357/696/1/L13/pdf/1538-4357_696_1_L13.pdf


12 posted on 03/12/2012 8:58:35 PM PDT by U-238
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To: U-238
Star clusters?

I shot this not too long ago of the M13 star cluster.

From where I am located, it was not visible to the unaided eye.

M-13 is a Globular star cluster in the Constellation Hercules. It contains several hundred thousand stars, and is approximately 25,000 light years from earth.

It's estimated the cluster has about half million stars and is about 100 light years diameter.

It's believed the age of M13 is about 14 billion years.

13 posted on 03/12/2012 9:10:20 PM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: dragnet2

That is a very good photograph.


14 posted on 03/12/2012 9:13:17 PM PDT by U-238
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To: U-238

Thanks...BTW, very interesting article you posted here.


15 posted on 03/12/2012 9:22:27 PM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: U-238; SunkenCiv

Yes, THANK YOU for posting this thread. Interesting topic and thought provoking.

(Thanks to Sunken Civ for his comment reminding me of the value of saying THANK YOU)

I had never considered , before, the idea that our Sun had siblings.


16 posted on 03/12/2012 11:08:01 PM PDT by UCANSEE2 (Lame and ill-informed post)
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To: UCANSEE2; SunkenCiv

We are all made from star stuff. The atoms in our body came from a heart of a star that blew itself up billions of years ago.


17 posted on 03/12/2012 11:15:29 PM PDT by U-238
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To: U-238

We have seen the lost siblings of the sun, and they is us.


18 posted on 03/13/2012 6:49:52 AM PDT by TheOldLady (FReepmail me to get ON or OFF the ZOT LIGHTNING ping list)
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To: U-238
Great find, thx! I've wondered about this for many years and have asked about it in online astronomy forums a number of times. I never got an answer, but you know the Sun must have siblings.

The chemical fingerprint of those sibling systems should be similar to our solar system and if evolution started from scratch here, it may have started from scratch in those systems as well. If things must be just so for life to get started, sibling systems will be a juicy target for any ET search, if we can identify them.

Interesting fact: Alpha Centauri A and B are about the same size and age as the Sun. Could they be siblings? Maybe. I think the composition is similar. I don't know how well their motion tracks ours.

19 posted on 03/13/2012 5:16:12 PM PDT by LibWhacker
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To: LibWhacker

Alpha Centauri A and B could be from the same stellar nursery. If Proxima was bound to the Alpha Centauri system during its formation, the stars would be likely to share the same elemental composition. We can say its a “captured” heavenly body.


20 posted on 03/13/2012 8:00:26 PM PDT by U-238
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