
New Evidence That All Stars Are Born in Pairs - okket
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2017-19
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twic
> Many stars have companions

Most stars.

Many years ago, i downloaded a copy of the Gliese star catalogue, and set
about generating some star charts of nearby space in VRML (which should give
you some idea of just how many years ago that was). Multiple stars are listed
as multiple entries in the catalogue, and i realised that if i drew markers
for each one, they'd overlap and look terrible. Never mind, i thought, there
will only be a few of them, and that's alright for a first version.

Not so! The majority of stars were in multiple systems (although the majority
of systems are not multiple), and the chart looked even more shonky than i had
anticipated. I had to go back and tweak my generator to merge multiple stars
into single entries.

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djsumdog
oh wow .. VRML. That does take me back

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antognini
For some background, a little under half of all stellar systems are binaries.
About 40% are single stars, and about 10% are triple systems. The remainder
(perhaps a few percent) are higher-order systems like quadruples and
quintuples.

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jnordwick
Could Jupiter have been a failed pair?

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jansho
Well what do you know, Jupiter doesn't actually orbit the sun! Not properly
anyway

[http://www.iflscience.com/space/forget-wha-you-heard-
jupiter...](http://www.iflscience.com/space/forget-wha-you-heard-jupiter-does-
not-orbit-the-sun/)

~~~
ngoldbaum
This is silly semantics. Jupiter and the Sun both orbit the center of mass of
the Jupiter-Sun system. The article is making the point that for Jupiter and
the Sun this point happens to be just outside the surface of the Sun.

It's much simpler to say "Jupiter orbits the Sun" than "Jupiter and the Sun
both orbit the center of mass of the Jupiter-Sun system". You can think of the
former as a shorthand for the latter.

~~~
jansho
But doesn't this show that the main players of the solar system are the sun
and Jupiter?

Apologies for the source, and my clear lack of knowledge in astronomy.

~~~
theoh
All planets orbit the centre of mass of themselves and the local star, modulo
interactions with other planets. The position of the centre of mass relative
to the surface of the star is completely immaterial.

NB for smaller bodies, Jupiter _is_ involved in perturbing or capturing their
orbits to a great extent -- but we could conceivably have several very large
planets contributing to that dynamic. Yes, Jupiter is the largest planet.

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aisofteng
Mostly unrelated, but Nemesis, one of Isaac Asimov's lesser known novels, was
one I personally found a good read.

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JoeAltmaier
The article says "egg-shaped cocoon" half a dozen times. Does it really mean
"elliptical"? It would seem odd for one end of the gas cloud that forms binary
systems to be larger on one end. If so, they don't explain why or how.

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exabrial
I read this initially as "paris" and the title took a strange turn when I
clicked it

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ihaveajob
Glad I'm not the only one. I wonder if someone thought that would be a catchy
title for this reason.

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sdiq
I know this really isn't the place for religion but somehow the Quran talks
about these things:

51:47-49 47\. We constructed the universe with power, and We are expanding it.
48\. And the earth—We spread it out—How well We prepared it! 49\. We created
all things in pairs, so that you may reflect and ponder.

And that the universe is actually expanding is something that wasn't known at
the time of Mohammad.

~~~
diogenescynic
I think that's just confirmation bias (might be another fallacy) because when
you have enough source material, it's trivially easy to find those types of
references predicting the future or describing something we only prove later.
You also end up ignoring all the times the source material was wrong and
focusing on the instances it was seemingly correct. See also, Nostradamus and
the Bible for a similar type of phenomena.

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ramshanker
So we lost our partner? So sad.... ;) I remember reading, nearest proxima
century is also a group of stars.

~~~
astrobe_
It would be Nemesis:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_%28hypothetical_star%2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_%28hypothetical_star%29)

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acd
If all stars are born in pairs where is our suns sister sun and earths sibling
planet?

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umeshunni
From the article:

Based on this model, the Sun's sibling most likely escaped and mixed with all
the other stars in our region of the Milky Way galaxy, never to be seen again.

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yshdjfhu4irekf
is it possible that it's just on an extreme orbit and we may one day
reconnect?

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simonh
We would easily detect a star closer to the Sun than our known stellar
neighbours. Any former sibling star further away from us than that would be
affected by the gravity of other stars more than by the gravity of the Sun.

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meric
How far could the star have travelled in 200 million years? I find it hard to
think it could be more than a dozen light years away. And the list of stars
within, say, 20 light years, is finite.

~~~
simonh
I think you may be confusing the age of the Sun with the time it takes to
complete one galactic orbit.

The sun is more than 4 billion years old while 200m years is a bit less than
the period for one orbit of the Galaxy (225-250 my). The Sun has completed
more than 20 orbits in its lifetime. Even a 0.1% difference in galactic
orbital period between the sun and it's twin would put them 3,000 light-years
apart by now.

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sideshowb
I read that as Paris. On the plus side it makes more sense now. Should
probably go to sleep...

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gitpusher
I also read Paris, and thought "stars" referred to celebrities. Oops

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aeleos
That is literally the exact thing that I thought too. Its interesting that a
sentence like this can be so easily misinterpreted by multiple people in the
same way.

~~~
janwillemb
Isn't it the capitalization of the first characters of each word which causes
the confusion?

 _New evidence that all stars are born in pairs_

versus

 _New Evidence That All Stars Are Born in Pairs_

I've never understood the rationale of capitalizing headlines this way anyway
(is it the American way?)

~~~
obmelvin
Yes, titles of things (including but not limited to visual art, written works,
songs) are generally all capitalized except for small words

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motyar
I read it 'Paris'. I need some coffee.

~~~
kjhughes
Same here.

I believe the effect is similar to that of a garden path sentence[1] except
instead of discovering a grammatical inconsistency and having to backtrack to
re-parse, the grammatical context misleads the lexical level so much so that
we "see" 'Paris' where 'Pairs' actually exists. I suspect that the 'P' being
capitalized further supports the 'Paris' misinterpretation.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence)

~~~
gpvos
Also, the weird English custom to capitalize most words in titles, but not in
normal sentences, adds to the confusion here.

~~~
cormullion
US-English, I think. British-English headlines are less caps-heavy.

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mxfh
_We 'll Always Have Pairs_

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memracom
Yes, there will always be a Paris... city of light!

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toddmorey
LeBron James and Steph Curry were born in the same Akron, Ohio hospital, 39
months apart, so I buy the theory.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-
lead/wp/2015/05/28...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-
lead/wp/2015/05/28/lebron-james-and-steph-curry-were-born-in-the-same-akron-
hospital-39-months-apart/)

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fokinsean
_Adds kindle to Nibiru fire_

