Our luminary was separated from the uterine relatives about 5 billion years ago.
Armenian astronomers from the Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory, together with their Portuguese (Instituto de Astrofisica e Ciencias do Espaco, Universidade do Porto) and French (Universite Cote d'Azur, Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur) colleagues, discovered the stars two drops like the sun. In fact, they found a twin brother.
The twin named HD 186302 is now about 184 light years distant from our star. And once they were inseparable - they were born at the same time, for some time they were in the same star cradle, but for some mysterious reason they fled. Astronomers believe that this happened about 4.6 billion years ago.
Explorers looking for solar brothers call themselves galactic archaeologists. Their activity is based on the hypothesis that stars are born not singly, but in groups - clusters. Like puppies. Formed from the same cloud of gas and dust. They turn out to be similar to each other - both externally and in chemical composition. Some stay together, forming double and triple star systems. Others scatter across the galaxy. They are what interest archaeologists.
The archaeologists of the current team have selected 17,000 potential brothers. Of these, 55 stars were selected whose luminosity, spectral characteristics, size and chemical composition were close to the solar one. 12 stars entered the next round, the set of chemical elements of which almost did not differ from the solar one. Next, astronomers determined the age of potential brothers - four approached our star, and two were also close in isotopic composition. Of these, the most suitable one was chosen for the next of kin. It was this very HD 186302, which has an almost perfect "genetic" similarity.
Galactic archaeologists assure that the star in the center of the image is the twin of the Sun - Brother-2.
The current "brother" is already the second one found recently. Brother 2. The first was found four years ago by American astronomers led by Professor Ivan Ramirez of the University of Texas at Austin. For the role of Brother-1, they proposed a star, designated HD 162826. It is located in the constellation Hercules, 110 light-years from us.
Brother 1: The first twin discovered in 2014.
Promotional video:
The authors of the discovery assured: HD 162826 is not the only brother. Somewhere in our Galaxy - the Milky Way - others are also lost. As they looked into the water. Brother-2 was also found.
Scientists believe that the sun was not born where it is now. As well as his brothers. When others are found - if not all, but at least many, galactic archaeologists will determine the parameters of their movement. And then they will calculate the point at which the brothers' trajectories took their origin. Most likely, it will be the place where the whole solar family was born.
“Having found out in which part of the Milky Way the Sun was formed, we will find out in what conditions the early solar system was,” Ramirez said. - Maybe we can understand why we are here. And what contributed to the emergence of life.
Whether the twins have planets is not yet known. But Vardan Adibekyan, the leader of the group of astronomers who discovered Brother 2, does not exclude this. At least he dreams of finding a rocky planet in the habitable zone in the "brotherly star system" - a full-fledged Earth-2.
Adibekyan and his colleagues spoke about their research in the Astronomy & Astrophysics magazine. They were briefly introduced by ScienceAlert in an article titled Astronomers May Have Just Discovered Our Sun's Long-Lost Identical Twin.
VLADIMIR LAGOVSKY