Most Stars Are Single

An anonymous reader writes to tell us Space.com is reporting that 'for more than 200 years, astronomers thought that most of the stars in our galaxy had stellar companions. But a new study suggests the bulk of them are born alone and never have stellar company.' The key difference seems to come from the difference between the highly turbulent clouds that produce massive stars in groups and the less active smaller clouds that produce red dwarfs."

Quality

[saskboy]

We all realized how far down in quality Slashdot has sunk when the first thought on everyone's mind when they saw this title was, "I can think of way more married stars than single ones."

In astronomy class 4 years ago I learned that most solar systems were binary or more complex, so this is very interesting news indeed. I wonder if this improves the chances of more solar systems having planetary companions, since I'd think it less likely for binary or trinary systems to have planets since more matter in the system is taken up in star mass.

This might also increase the calculable possibility for habitible planets in our galzaxy too.

A blow to the nemesis theory.

[warewolfe]

While the results of the star survey do not disprove the nemesis theory, they do seem to lessen the chance of it being correct. With red dwarves being being the most likely suspect for nemesis (see http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/ nemesis_010320-1.html/ [space.com] and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_(star)/ [wikipedia.org]) and at the same time not likely to be a companion star, I guess they'll have to look for different astrological suspects.