Where Is Our Sun's Twin?
New research suggests sun-like stars are born in pairs, resurrecting the idea of a solar sibling from billions of years ago.
In the 1980s, some astronomers started batting around the idea that the sun had a long-lost twin, circling undetected in the edges of the solar system. They suggested that the existence to our own might explain some cataclysmic events on Earth, like the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. Perhaps the orbit of this star, they said, was capable of disrupting the Oort cloud, a massive region of icy objects beyond Neptune’s orbit. Its gravitational forces could dislodge comets and send them hurtling toward Earth. The astronomers named the hypothetical star Nemesis, after the Greek goddess of retribution.
