Astronomers from the University of Texas in Austin have discovered a star that has the same composition as our sun–a solar sibling born from the same immense cloud of gas and dust from which the Sun emerged some 4.5 billion years ago.
Over the course of hundreds of millions of years, the Sun and its thousands of sibling stars drifted further and further apart to be scattered far and wide across the galaxy. Surprisingly, the newly discovered solar twin, just 15 percent larger than our sun, lies a relatively close 110 light years away and is just one of 30 stars that other astronomers have identified as being possible solar siblings, according to a report in examiner.com. Details of the discovery will be published June 1 in the Astrophysical Journal.
