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It is so similar to the Sun that scientists say it's not only her sister, but twins.
An international team of astronomers has detected a star that looks like a carbon copy of ours.
It has the same temperature and brightness, a very similar chemistry and almost the same age, about 4,500 million years old.
The twin star, called HD 186302, is 184 light years away and will allow scientists to investigate the birthplace of the Sun, which remains a mystery.
"Because there is not much information about the Sun's past, studying these sunny stars can help us understand where in the galaxy and under what conditions the sun was formed," he said in a statement. Vardan Adibekyan, astronomer of the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences in Portugal, who led the research.
— Star beds —
Astronomers have long sought the Sun Sisters, that is, the stars they formed in the same cloud of gas and dust as ours.
So far, very few candidates to be sister have been identified.
It is known that thousands of stars were formed in those cradles or stellar nurseries, but with the passage of time they dispersed into the Milky Way, so it is very difficult to find them.
Adibekyan and his colleagues used a sophisticated method in their research.
"Through collaboration between Patrick de Laverny and Alejandra Recio Blanco at the Costa Azul Observatory, we have obtained a sample of 230,000 spectra of the AMBRE project (an initiative created by the Southern European Observatory and the Costa Azul Observatory)."
Scientists have also used spectral data in a very large sample of stars obtained thanks to Gaia's European satellite.
— "Earth 2.0" —
One of the big questions astronomers will want to answer is if a planet around HD 186302 could live life.
"Some theoretical calculations show that there is a negligible probability that life could be extended from Earth to other planets or exoplanets during the last intense bombing, "Adibekyan said.
The intense bomb was about 4,000 million years ago, when the solar system bodies were hit by large asteroids.
The possibility of detecting the signs of life in an exoplanet of the solar twin excites the Adibekyan.
"If we are lucky and our solar sister has a planet and the planet is rocky, it is in the inhabited area and, finally, if the planet has been contaminated by the seeds of life on Earth, then we have what one might dream of: Earth 2.0 , orbiting on a Sun 2.0 ".
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