Solar Sibling

Researchers have discovered another star “almost certainly” born out of the same cloud of dust and gas as our own. This ‘solar sibling” could help us understand our own sun, and there’s a small chance it or other members of the sun’s family could be orbited by planets that contain life. “We want to know where we were born,” said lead the team’s lead researcher, astronomer Ivan Ramirez of The University of Texas at Austin. “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.” Ramirez said that it’s not only possible that solar siblings contain life, but that life on earth may have originated on one of them. In the early days of the “birth cluster” collisions could have knocked chunks off planets. “So it could be argued that solar siblings are key candidates in the search for extraterrestrial life,” Ramirez said. The sun’s brother, or sister,