Open star cluster Trumpler 14, a cluster with more than two thousand stars, similar to the one where the Sun was born.

(ESO/H. Sana)

At a Glance

The majority of suns, or stars,were born in pairsor in larger systemsbillions of years ago.Millions of these solar siblings were eventually flung out into the galaxy.Our sun is an anomaly because it is a solo star.A team of astronomers believes they may have found if not an identical twin, then a sibling of our own home star.

A team of astronomers in Portugal says they may have located our sun's identical twin and it could lead to the discovery of life on other planets.

The majority of suns, or stars,were (binary) or in larger systems (tripleor more), also known as stellar nurseries,billions of years ago.

Millions of these solar siblings were eventually flung out into the galaxy,drifting farther and farther apart, but many () stayed within theirbinary or larger systems, meaning they stayed close enough to remain in each other's gravitational orbit.

Our sun is an anomaly because it is a solo star, but there is some evidence that it had a binary twin at some point in its 4.57-billion-year life.

Finding our sun's twin has been a long quest for astronomers, and now, a team of researchers believes they may have found if not an identical twin, then a , according to research by Portugal's Institute of Astrophysics and Space (IA).

TheIA team locatedsome 184 light years away. They say the star is not only a solar sibling but is "special" because of its similarity to our sun, including its age, chemical composition andits size (it's slightly bigger than our sun).

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The IA researchers say studying solar siblings canprovide clues about how our galaxy was created.

"Since there isn't much information about the sun's past, studying these stars can help us understand where in the Galaxy and under which conditions the sun was formed," AIastronomer Vardan Adibekyansaid in the press release.

Solar siblings might also be good candidates to search for life since there is a possibility that life could have been "transported between planets around stars of the solar cluster," according to the press release.

Adibekyan said he is cautiously optimistic that HD186302 could lead to the discovery of life on other planets in the galaxy.

“Some theoretical calculations show that there is anon-negligible probability that life spread from Earth to other planets or exoplanetary systems, during the period of the late heavy bombardment," Adibekyan said. "If we are lucky, and our sibling candidate has a planet, and the planet is a rocky type, in the habitable zone, and finally if this planet was 'contaminated' by the life seeds from Earth, then we have what one could dream – an Earth 2.0, orbiting a Sun 2.0.”