The Lost Siblings of the Sun

Sky and Telescope ^ | 3/10/2009 | Alan MacRobert

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Most stars are born in clusters rather than singly, and there’s plenty of evidence that the Sun was too.

For one thing, the material of the infant solar system (as preserved in the earliest meteorites) was enriched by fresh supernova debris from at least one very young, massive star (having 15 to 25 solar masses) that exploded less than 5 light-years away, no more than 2 million years after the Sun's formation. Today no such massive star exists within 300 light-years of the Sun. Clearly, the early solar system had stars close around it.

But that was 4.57 billion years ago. Where are the Sun’s cluster-mates now?

Some of them, it turns out, should remain surprisingly nearby. An analysis by Simon F. Portegies Zwart (University of Amsterdam) finds that the Sun’s birth cluster started off with about 500 to 3,000 solar masses and a diameter smaller than about 20 light-years — typical for open clusters. Evidence for the cluster's mass and size, Zwart writes, is preserved in the anomalous chemical abundances and structure of the solar system's Kuiper Belt — the realm of small, icy objects out beyond Neptune. Some of the Kuiper Belt's objects are dynamically "hot"; they were stirred up and scattered by the gravity of at least one nearby cluster star making a close pass in early days.

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"You took the words right out of my mouth."

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Can we find the Sun’s relatives?

Just ask the Mormons. I always heard they had some extensive genealogy databases.

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Such stars, would be roughly one solar mass (the size of the sun) or less and have chemical abundances similar to the sun.

Or they could be very, very large and have a totally different chemical structure.

(based on the observation that whenever we declare what IS or ISN'T possible, the Universe shows us the opposite about 2 months later)

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I don’t see the current location of the solar system as being a beehive of activity where a large cluster of stars used to be.

I am more inclined to believe that we were blown out of a cluster of stars closer to the center of the galaxy, into a remote and distant arm of the galaxy.

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Find the same stellar DNA as the Sun and compare it to other stars.

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You may want to read this:

http://www.mendeley.com/research/the-lost-siblings-of-the-sun/#page-1

I would say that the birth place is out on the arms of the galaxy then they are dispersed

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Somewhere like here?

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That is a picture of a supernova. A supernova is a trigger for stars to form.It compresses the gases and dust.The collapse of the cloud into a more central ball causes the atoms to collide more frequently, therefore causing the gases to begin heating. The Trifid nebula is home to many newborn stars and solar systems to be form.I think that the Gaia astrometry satellite will be able locate the siblings of the Sun

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Many civilizations believed that the center of the galaxy was the “birthplace” of the solar system.Solar System is lucky enough to lie in a Galactic Habitable Zone,28000 ly from the center.