IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v453y2008i7198d10.1038_nature07069.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Surprising dissimilarities in a newly formed pair of ‘identical twin’ stars

Author

Listed:
  • Keivan G. Stassun

    (Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235, USA)

  • Robert D. Mathieu

    (University of Wisconsin—Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA)

  • Phillip A. Cargile

    (Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235, USA)

  • Alicia N. Aarnio

    (Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235, USA)

  • Eric Stempels

    (School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St Andrews, North Haugh, St Andrews KY16 9SS, UK)

  • Aaron Geller

    (University of Wisconsin—Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA)

Abstract

Star formation: When binary twins grow apart Two stars born at the same time and with the same mass and composition are known as 'identical twins,' and are expected to have identical physical attributes. But Par 1802, a young (million-year-old) binary star system recently discovered in the Orion nebula, consists of two stars with identical masses, but dissimilar temperatures, luminosities and radii. These surprising dissimilarities suggest that one of the twins was delayed by several hundred thousand years in its development relative to its sibling. The agreement of theoretical ages derived for each star in a binary system is taken as a self-consistency test for pre-main-sequence stellar evolution models, so this lack of age synchronization in Par 1802 suggests a precision limit of several hundred thousand years for such empirical tests.

Suggested Citation

  • Keivan G. Stassun & Robert D. Mathieu & Phillip A. Cargile & Alicia N. Aarnio & Eric Stempels & Aaron Geller, 2008. "Surprising dissimilarities in a newly formed pair of ‘identical twin’ stars," Nature, Nature, vol. 453(7198), pages 1079-1082, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:453:y:2008:i:7198:d:10.1038_nature07069
    DOI: 10.1038/nature07069
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature07069
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/nature07069?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:453:y:2008:i:7198:d:10.1038_nature07069. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.