Our sun is very special

1999/10/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Astronomia

Recently, there have been numerous news about the existence of an alien life. But Guillermo González, of the University of Washington, believes that our Sun is not a conventional star, but so special to allow the creation and development of life on Earth. The Sun is a simple star, although most of the star systems are double. It is also the 10% more compact of the surrounding stars and is 50% heavier than the stars of its same age and feature, with a third of brightness difference. And the most characteristic is the orbit around the area of the galaxy.

For this reason, its orbit is more circular than similar stars in age and likeness (which prevents the supernovae from approaching very abundant places in the galaxy), its orbit is stable (this stability occurs in unistar systems) and its inclination is very low compared to the ecliptic (notorious crosses with the galactic plane and therefore with perturbations with the clouds of Oort kites).

More special, its orbit is very close to the radius of the Milky Way's corrosion, where the angular velocity of the spiral structure is the same as that of its surroundings (which prevents the spiral arms with supernovae from crossing often). All these particularities leave aside 95% of the possible stars with intelligent life.