Astronomers have identified a yellow star they say is the best twin to our own sun yet seen.
In other words, it’s a star that’s almost identical to the sun. And that’s interesting because our sun shines on a life-bearing planet.
But stars like the sun are rare, according to astronomers. They account for only 4 percent of all stars in our Milky Way galaxy. And stars exactly like our sun must be even more rare. Scientists reported the previously best known example – a star named 18 Scorpii – ten years ago.
Now Jorge Meléndez at Mount Stromlo Observatory in Australia and Iván Ramírez at the University of Texas at Austin say they’ve found an even better solar twin. Its name is HD 101364. It’s 220 light-years from Earth.
These astronomers say the star’s mass, temperature, and chemical composition appear to match the sun’s exactly. But the star may emit slightly more light than our sun. Since sun-like stars brighten as they age, this suggests the star may be a billion years older than our sun.
But that difference might actually be good news for extraterrestrial life seekers. It means an orbiting planet has had even more time to give rise to life than Earth has.
Our thanks to:
Jorge Meléndez
Mt. Stromlo in Australia
since i was 18 years old (1968) i was telling my friends if you want to know if there is anther life in our space look where is sun like ours and you will find life around it.is that true we have sisters SUN , planet will not be made with out water. so what i am thinking that the whole universe was fill with water first , pecause with out water planet will not be made .long ago when some one said the earth is round not flat human put him in jail and they where about to kill him .
That is a very good theory. I agree with that. And also, there’s so many stars out there, and there’s more than likely “planets” surrounding them.
The universe is so big, it wouldn’t make sense if there weren’t other life out there.
Let’s hope we find them first eh?
I will be very surprised if we don’t eventually discover extraterrestial life of some sort, but I don’t know if the discovery of a Sun like star offers that much hope for the discovery of life as we know it. Consider that in addition to a Sun like star with a wet rocky planet in the proper temperature range life as we know it on Earth would not exist withouty ou oversize Moon and the Earth’s unusually massive (for the planet’s size) nickle iron core which generates the strong magnetic field which protects us from ionizing radiation