Did The Sun Have A Twin?

It has been observed that many binary star systems exist throughout the galaxies. Scientists from the University of California – Berkeley, have known that stars are usually binary in nature. In a recent study they wanted to ascertain if they were born that way or one captured the other.

They paid attention to the Perseus molecular cloud which is the dense core within which young stars are born. As the astronomers studied this nest egg of baby stars they were able to see that most sun like stars were born as wide binary systems. These are low mass stars.

Eventually these wide binary systems will either split up or become tight binary systems. The studies were based on statistical models which analysed Perseus molecular clouds. It was found that the only model which could produce the accurate current data started with all stars as binary systems.

This gives credibility to the fact that when our sun was born 4.5 billion years ago, it probably did have a twin. It was not an identical twin, and eventually their binary system split up. There may have been as yet unrecorded nemesis which caused the split. It would make an interesting science project to find out more about this twin.