NASA discovers star system similar to ours, right on our galactic doorstep
Astronomers describe Epsilon Eridani as “a much younger version of our solar system”
Thomas McMullan
@thomas_mac
3 May 2017
There’s a star system that’s very similar to our own, and it could teach us a lot about how our planet was made.
Astronomers at NASA have confirmed the discovery of a star called Epsilon Eridani, ten light years away in the constellation Eridanus (you know the one, near the Starbucks), which they think will have major implications for how we understand our solar system.
This is because the star is reportedly similar to our own sun, but one-fifth its age – meaning scientists can glean crucial information about the formation of our own star and planets. It’s a bit like looking back through time at a younger version of yourself, except nothing like that because we’re talking about complex astronomy; not Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
"This star hosts a planetary system currently undergoing the same cataclysmic processes that happened to the solar system in its youth, at the time in which the moon gained most of its craters, Earth acquired the water in its oceans, and the conditions favorable for life on our planet were set," astronomer Massimo Marengo, one of the scientists studying Epsilon Eridani, wrote in a summary of the project.
More:
http://www.alphr.com/space/1005855/nasa-discovers-star-system-similar-to-ours-right-on-our-galactic-doorstep
= new reply since forum marked as read
As part of Project Ozma, the first inspection of possible radio transmissions from intelligent alien life. The birth of SETI!
It is not a newly discovered system as this article suggests. What idiot wrote this garbage? Apparently Thomas McMullan is the idiot. His main job is probably to write the obituaries and his editor said, "Hey Tom! Here's a story for you about some new star."
Hell! I knew about epsilon eridani in 1960, too. And I was only 12 years old. As one of the closest bright stars epsilon eridani would have been known in antiquity. In fact it even has an Arabic name, Ran, which goes back centuries!
Fucking blinkered idiots! Who writes this garbage?
