Solar Twins Are Hard to Find
TNRTB Archive – Retained for reference information
Scientists continue to find evidence for the uniqueness of the solar system. Over the past 35 years, astronomers have searched for a star identical to the Sun. Comparing mass, temperature, age, metallicity, luminosity, rotation, and orbital distance from the center of the galaxy, the search has turned up only two stars that are reasonably similar to the Sun. However, both of these candidates show noticeable differences from the Sun. For example, while both “twins” are younger than the Sun, they are about 5% brighter. This difference is significant considering that stars’ brightness increases as they get older. In the Earth-Moon-Sun system, the brightness increase requires a highly fine-tuned carbonate silicate cycle to ensure habitable temperatures on Earth. The inherently brighter “twins” would require an even greater degree of fine-tuning if they were to demonstrate habitable temperatures. While the uniqueness of the solar system finds a difficult fit in naturalistic scenarios, it finds a natural fit in RTB’s biblically based creation model, which predicts such discoveries.
- Jorge Meléndez, Katie Dodds-Eden, and José A. Robles, “HD 98618: A Star Closely Resembling Our Sun,” Astrophysical Journal Letters 641 (2006): L133-36.
- https://iopscience.iop.org/1538-4357/641/2/L133
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