Surprising dissimilarities in a newly formed pair of ‘identical twin’ stars

Keivan G. Stassun (), Robert D. Mathieu, Phillip A. Cargile, Alicia N. Aarnio, Eric Stempels and Aaron Geller
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Keivan G. Stassun: Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235, USA
Robert D. Mathieu: University of Wisconsin—Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA
Phillip A. Cargile: Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235, USA
Alicia N. Aarnio: Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235, USA
Eric Stempels: School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St Andrews, North Haugh, St Andrews KY16 9SS, UK
Aaron Geller: University of Wisconsin—Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA

Nature, 2008, vol. 453, issue 7198, 1079-1082

Abstract: Star formation: When binary twins grow apart Two stars born at the same time and with the same mass and composition are known as 'identical twins,' and are expected to have identical physical attributes. But Par 1802, a young (million-year-old) binary star system recently discovered in the Orion nebula, consists of two stars with identical masses, but dissimilar temperatures, luminosities and radii. These surprising dissimilarities suggest that one of the twins was delayed by several hundred thousand years in its development relative to its sibling. The agreement of theoretical ages derived for each star in a binary system is taken as a self-consistency test for pre-main-sequence stellar evolution models, so this lack of age synchronization in Par 1802 suggests a precision limit of several hundred thousand years for such empirical tests.

Date: 2008
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DOI: 10.1038/nature07069

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