Illustration showing the Sun drifting away from its early stellar siblings, leaving behind clues preserved in the outer solar system (Photo: File)
The fact that our Sun was once part of a larger stellar family has been a point of much discussion, but researchers have long struggled to determine how long those sibling stars hung together before drifting across the galaxy.
A new study takes a fresh look by turning its gaze to the outer reaches of our solar system, where the remnants of that ancient separation may still exist.
Most astronomers agree that the Sun came into being within a tight cluster of newly minted stars in a dense nebula filled with gas and dust. Many sibling stars were near neighbours and their strong gravity frequently crossed, causing chaotic interactions.
Every stellar close approach had the potential to disrupt the forming planetary systems, hurling outer objects onto eccentric orbits or even expelling them completely.
To begin to constrain how long the Sun spent in this chaotic nursery, a team of astronomers led by Amir Siraj of Princeton University examined a small population of distant objects called sednoids.
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These nine known icy bodies orbit far beyond 400 astronomical units with their orbital planes sit neatly aligned with the planets-an unusual order that suggests the Sun did not have to endure extreme turbulence as it separated from its stellar cluster.
The team ran extensive simulations to test how different stellar flybys could have shaped the sednoids orbits. Assuming about 100 stars shared the Sun's early space, results hinted that the Sun escaped the most dangerous zone in roughly 50 million years.
If this timeline is correct, the sednoids were pushed into their distant paths almost immediately, a rapid exit from the birthplace.
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Even with such an intriguing estimate, one fundamental question remains: how did these objects arrive at these extreme, far-flung orbits in the first place? Their existence continues to baffle astronomers, who surmise there may be unseen pieces of the Sun's early history yet to be found.
While there are still many mysteries, the new findings add weight to the notion that our solar system carries the imprint of a long-ago stellar breakup. These distant orbits may be subtle reminders of a crowded past that influenced the architecture of the Sun's neighborhood billions of years ago.
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Disclaimer: This article summarizes current scientific research and does not claim definitive conclusions, as astronomical findings continue to evolve.
