Did our sun have a twin when it was born 4.5 billion years ago? Almost certainly yes!
Now, for the first time, scientists have found proof that our sun has a twin called Nemesis and it may exist somewhere in the universe after revealing that all stars are born in pairs.
Image: This infrared image from the Hubble Space Telescope contains a bright, fan-shaped object (lower right quadrant) thought to be a binary star that emits light pulses as the two stars interact. (Image: NASA, ESA and J. Muzerolle, STScI). Credit: newsberkley.edu.
And so did every other sun-like star in the universe, according to a new analysis by a theoretical physicist from UC Berkeley and a radio astronomer from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory at Harvard University.
It is said that Nemesis is the cause for hurling objects from the outer solar system towards Earth and ‘Nemesis’ was supposed to have kicked an asteroid into Earth’s orbit that collided with our planet and exterminated the dinosaurs. Note: Is Nemesis the so-called ‘Second Sun”?
The new assertion is based on a radio survey of a giant molecular cloud filled with recently formed stars in the constellation Perseus, and a mathematical model that can explain the Perseus observations only if all sun-like stars are born with a companion.
Image: A radio image of a triple star system forming within a dusty disk in the Perseus molecular cloud obtained by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. (Image: Bill Saxton, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), NRAO/AUI/NSF). Credit: newsberkley.edu.
“We are saying, yes, there probably was a Nemesis, a long time ago,” said co-author Steven Stahler, a UC Berkeley research astronomer, reports newsberkley.edu.
In this study, “wide” means that the two stars are separated by more than 500 astronomical units, or AU, where one astronomical unit is the average distance between the sun and Earth (93 million miles). A wide binary companion to our sun would have been 17 times farther from the sun than its most distant planet today, Neptune.
Based on this model, the sun’s sibling most likely escaped and mixed with all the other stars in our region of the Milky Way galaxy, never to be seen again.
It will be not surprising that scientists have started an intensive research to find Nemesis.
Now, for the first time, scientists have found proof that our sun has a twin called Nemesis and it may exist somewhere in the universe after revealing that all stars are born in pairs.
Image: This infrared image from the Hubble Space Telescope contains a bright, fan-shaped object (lower right quadrant) thought to be a binary star that emits light pulses as the two stars interact. (Image: NASA, ESA and J. Muzerolle, STScI). Credit: newsberkley.edu.
And so did every other sun-like star in the universe, according to a new analysis by a theoretical physicist from UC Berkeley and a radio astronomer from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory at Harvard University.
It is said that Nemesis is the cause for hurling objects from the outer solar system towards Earth and ‘Nemesis’ was supposed to have kicked an asteroid into Earth’s orbit that collided with our planet and exterminated the dinosaurs. Note: Is Nemesis the so-called ‘Second Sun”?
The new assertion is based on a radio survey of a giant molecular cloud filled with recently formed stars in the constellation Perseus, and a mathematical model that can explain the Perseus observations only if all sun-like stars are born with a companion.
Image: A radio image of a triple star system forming within a dusty disk in the Perseus molecular cloud obtained by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. (Image: Bill Saxton, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), NRAO/AUI/NSF). Credit: newsberkley.edu.
“We are saying, yes, there probably was a Nemesis, a long time ago,” said co-author Steven Stahler, a UC Berkeley research astronomer, reports newsberkley.edu.
In this study, “wide” means that the two stars are separated by more than 500 astronomical units, or AU, where one astronomical unit is the average distance between the sun and Earth (93 million miles). A wide binary companion to our sun would have been 17 times farther from the sun than its most distant planet today, Neptune.
Based on this model, the sun’s sibling most likely escaped and mixed with all the other stars in our region of the Milky Way galaxy, never to be seen again.
It will be not surprising that scientists have started an intensive research to find Nemesis.