Does the sun have an identical twin? Scientists claim to have found a long-lost clone of our star

This infrared image contains a fan-shaped light object (lower right quadrant), considered a binary star that emits light pulses when the two stars interact. The primitive binary system is located in the IC 348 region of the Perseus Molecular Cloud

Astronomers have known for several decades that stars are born inside egg-shaped cocoons, called dense cores, which are scattered in huge clouds of cold and molecular hydrogen. , which are the nurseries of young stars.

With the help of an optical telescope, these clouds look like holes in the starry sky because the dust that accompanies the gas blocks the light of the stars that form inside and out. stars behind.

Telescope radios can, however, probe the clouds because the cold dust particles they contain emit at these radio wavelengths and the radio waves are not blocked by dust.

Thanks to data collected by the world's most advanced telescopes, scientists have been able to gain new insights into the birth of stars.

They found that the only way to explain the observations is to assume that all the stars of the masses around that of the sun begin as binaries in dense egg-shaped nuclei after which about 60% separate with time.

The rest contracts to form tight binaries.

"As the egg contracts, the denser part of the egg is located in the middle, forming two concentrations of density along the medial axis," said Steven. Stahler, a research astronomer from the University of Berkeley.

"These centers of higher density collapse at some point because of their inherent gravity to form class 0 stars."

"In our image, simple stars resembling solar and low-mass rays are not essential.

& # 39; They are the result of the dissolution of the binary files. & # 39;