Oldest Solar Twin Found
Hey Space Placers! For those of you in the U.S. Happy Labor Day! I tell my audiences that stars are like people. They come in all sizes and colors, they are born, they produce "offspring" in the form of planets, they live, they die. Doctors have used twins to study human health because you can learn a lot from following the course of the lives of each of them to see how they age, what happens to them and then apply that knowledge to other humans. Astronomers do the same thing in their study of stars. They are classified according to their masses relative to our own Sun which determines their temperature, color, longevity and manner of death. They also search for stars that are identical to our star, the Sun, so they can learn more about the Sun. It was recently announced that a solar twin had been discovered that is 8.2 billion years old as compared to our Sun's age of 4.6 billion years. HIP 102152 is in the constellation Capricornus and is 250 light years away....