Astronomers Identify the Sun's Long-Lost Sister 69
An anonymous reader writes "A team of researchers led by astronomer Ivan Ramirez of the University of Texas — Austin has identified the first 'sibling' of the sun, a star almost certainly born from the same cloud of gas and dust as our star. 'Astronomers had been observing the star for almost two decades without realizing it's the long-lost sister of the Sun. No doubt we have catalogued other solar siblings whose common heritage has yet to be discovered. Indeed, the UT team, lead by astronomer Ivan Ramirez, is confident that the identification of HD 162826 is just the beginning. "We want to know where we were born," Ramirez said in a statement. "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."'"
Re:Believe it or not (Score:5, Funny)
I was a bit skeptic when I heard that she weights even more than her sister, but it turns out she's not only incredibly hot, she's also radiant and an important central figure.
Re:Believe it or not (Score:5, Funny)
Men don't have cycles, or spotting, and doesn't discharge things quite as often.
They also don't become deficient of certain products in old age which causes them to rapidly change appearance.
Re:Believe it or not (Score:4, Funny)
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> Men ... doesn't discharge things quite as often
Obviously you've never seen the floor around the wastebasket in a teenage boy's room.
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Although the word sister can also mean "of the same type or origin", and is often used in English to describe similar things, especially if they come from the same place. You often hear of "sister ships" or "sister cities", and although these words have gender in other languages, they don't in English (though it derives from gendered languages). I think it's in this sense that the article refers to the "sun's sister".
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Fail.
Sol Sister (Score:5, Funny)
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well played sir, well played.
No mod points :(
Re:Sol Sister (Score:4, Funny)
How about, "But is she hot?"
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"Star spangled banner flutters in the sky
Time hustles those who wait to die
Sweet sol sister
Keep on pushing till the dawn, well
Sweet sol sister
Forever dancing on and on"
-The Cult
No photos?! (Score:3, Funny)
Well, if it runs in the family, I'd say maybe yea... a few thousand kelvin hot
Sister? (Score:2, Funny)
Surely if it's a son it should be its brother?
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Is the day after maternal appreciation ceremonies too soon?
Boooriing (Score:3)
What's amazing is that... (Score:5, Interesting)
On average, that star has only been moving away from the sun at about 16 miles per hour. There are people who can run faster. Yet after these billions of years, even that snail's pace has been enough to put 110 light years between us.
Re:What's amazing is that... (Score:4, Interesting)
To reply to my own comment, it's unlikely that that star has been moving away at a steady speed though. Most likely it's been through an insane trajectory that has at times taken it very far away and at times closer, as it orbits around the center of the milky way along with the sun.
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Wait wait wait, Clark was Superman?! A little spoiler warning next time, please!
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If memory serves me correctly, he also can be powered by other colors of stars, except red of course. Last Son of Krypton mentions blue, though he had reduced powers because of it.
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Ok, as I recall, hotter suns like blue and white, would increase his powers. Cooler, like red or brown would reduce them.
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The paper is freely available online and you can see distance and speed estimates on the bottom row of charts at page 13: http://www.as.utexas.edu/~ivan... [utexas.edu]
This star is thought to have been following a fairly predictable orbit over the last 4 billion years, which is one of the reasons why they're able to point to it as a potential sibling of the Sun. That is the researchers think that there is a decent probability that it has based on a simulation.
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To reply to my own comment, it's unlikely that that star has been moving away at a steady speed though. Most likely it's been through an insane trajectory that has at times taken it very far away and at times closer, as it orbits around the center of the milky way along with the sun.
Not necessarily. We know of several associations of stars called "moving groups" (the Ursa Major/Big Dipper constellation is largely the core one such group) that have a common origin -- they have the same space velocity vector, and are the same age, and are still relatively close to together in space after hundreds of millions or even billions of years (the Zeta Herculis Moving Group appears to be the oldest known so far -- somewhat older than our own sun). The shared vector means that the stars in a clust
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There are people who can run faster.
Not through empty space, though.
Why we are here...? (Score:5, Funny)
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That doesn't sound very falsifiable.
Re:Why we are here...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Obligatory Sesame-street:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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I thought science had basically decided that we are here simply because we are not over there.
...and then proceeded to create a model to explain how we get here from wherever we come from.
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I realize you were joking; that explains "How", but not the
* "What caused the Big Bang in the first place?"
* "If energy can never be created, nor destroyed -- the universe has always existed in some form -- then Why do we even exist at all?", that is,
* "What is the purpose of the universe?" (Answer: Relationships, which is just a short way of saying "To Know Itself.")
* "Why does Time appear to only flow in one direction?" (Answer: The brain wasn't designed to perceived the infinite; only the linear, otherw
I vote we name it... (Score:1)
Lady Marmalade [youtube.com]
Hey Sister, Go Sister, Sol Sister, Go Sister
Hey Sister, Go Sister, Sol Sister, Go Sister
Sister? (Score:4, Funny)
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There's a convention in English to refer to related inanimate objects as sisters. Sister-ships, for example. "Brother" doesn't tend to get used. No idea where it comes from mind you.
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A friend of mine would scold me for not scolding you about the difference between gender and sex.
Uh, in the natural state, they are the same thing. You have to apply technology to making someone appear a different gender on the outside sort of but you cannot change their sex. The reality is that everyone can tell the difference between a natural woman and a transexual. It is blindingly obvious and no amount of facial surgery can change that.
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It's not like there are any individuals in other species with the gross physical features of one gender but the reproductive characteristics of the other, right? That never happens.
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I could now start with a lame joke about how everyone has a gender but only certain people have sex... but it's just not fair, that's cheap.
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It's not difficult at all, in the simple cases. Boy stars are BLUE, and girl stars are PINK.
"What about the other colors" you ask? Well, there's a reason the GLBT flag is a rainbow. Some of the stars out there are FLAMING in more ways than one.
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We've been doing this for years already. The only star we don't really know the gender if is Lady Gaga
over 20 orbits around galazy since formation (Score:3)
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Now that's a frequency of family reunions even I can enjoy!