JOSÉ DIAS DO NASCIMENTO
Representation of solar twin CoRoT Sol 1: 6.7 billion years oldJOSÉ DIAS DO NASCIMENTOIts mass and chemical composition are roughly the same as the sun’s. Its rotation period – about 30 days – is similar as well. But at 6.7 billion years of age, it’s around two billion years older than the star that lights up our solar system. This is CoRoT Sol 1, the name that a group of Brazilian astrophysicists, with the collaboration of a colleague from Japan, bestowed upon the star that has been identified as the oldest and farthest known solar twin in the Milky Way (Astrophysical Journal Letters, in press). Located in the constellation Unicorn, our sun’s oldest sister is roughly 200 times fainter than its brightest known solar twin, 18 Scorpii. Discovered by the French satellite CoRoT, this star has now been studied in depth with the aid of Japan’s Subaru Telescope, which has an 8.2 meter mirror. “It’s as if this star were the sun in the future,” says José Dias do Nascimento, of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), leader of the team that discovered and described CoRoT Sol 1, along with Jorge Melendez, of the University of São Paulo (USP), and Gustavo Porto de Mello, of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). Although more research has been done on the sun than on any other celestial object in the galaxy, little is known about its process of evolution or about how unique, or typical, it might be in relation to other stars. According to the most accepted theories of solar evolution, the sun will become 33% brighter in three billion years, which would heat up the earth and evaporate the ocean waters. Researchers hope to obtain findings that confirm this theory through more thorough study of CoRoT Sol 1.
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