For millions of years, the Sun has provided energy to live on Earth. It is burning up to create constant energy as astronomers explore hidden surface mysteries and coronal differences.
However, little is known about the planet’s early days in our solar system and how they led to the formation of life on the planet. Nasa has discovered a new star that may reveal information about our own Sun and how it all began. The newborn star, which is only 30 light-years away, might act as a time machine.
It is shedding light on the Sun and telling us about the system’s early days as it developed over billions of years.
According to the study, studying the star gives researchers a better understanding of the influence of coronal emissions, stellar winds, and atmospheric erosion. Many other factors are also explored on early Venus, Earth, Mars, and young Earth-like exoplanets.
While it is difficult to travel back in time to examine conditions that favored life on Earth, analyzing stars in our solar system’s vicinity can aid in expanding our picture of how life began. There are about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, and one in ten of them has features similar to our Sun, while many are still developing.
The star, known as Kappa 1 Ceti, is believed to be between 600 and 750 million years old. Almost around the same age as our Sun when life began on Earth. According to Nasa, it’s like having a next-door neighbor because of the proximity (in cosmic terms).
It also has a mass and surface temperature similar to our Sun, making it a “twin” of our young star at the time life started on Earth and an important research subject.
The study analyzed data from the Hubble Space Telescope, Nasa’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and NICER missions, and ESA’s XMM- Newton mission to create a model that predicts some of Kappa 1 Ceti’s most essential, yet difficult to detect, properties.
The Sun, which is 4.65 billion years old, is nearing the end of its life cycle as it sends life-sustaining radiation to Earth. It wasn’t always like this, though.
Researchers believe that it revolved three times faster, had a stronger magnetic field, and emitted more intense high-energy radiation and particles during its toddler years, right after it was born.
Over millions of years, this impact has been limited to the poles, where it is now visible as auroras, bright flashes of dazzling light.
“Four billion years ago, considering the impact of our Sun’s wind at that time, these tremendous lights were likely often visible from many more places around the globe,” Vladimir Airapetian, a senior astrophysicist in the Heliophysics Division at Nasa said.
The high level of activity in the Sun’s nascence, according to researchers, may have pushed back Earth’s protective magnetosphere. This provided the planet with the right atmospheric chemistry for the formation of biological molecules. But not close enough to be torched like Venus, nor far enough to be ignored like Mars.
Astronomers are now looking for a stony planet that could be Earth’s twin and represent the planet in its early days, completing the story of the planet’s evolution. “Similar processes could be unfolding in stellar systems across our galaxy and universe,” they said.
