Stars' 'DNA' could help scientists find Sun's lost siblings

Sydney, April 18: With the aim to find the lost siblings of the Sun, now scattered across the sky, a team of astronomers has collected the “DNA” of more than 340,000 stars in the Milky Way. The “DNA” can help trace the ancestry of stars, showing astronomers how the universe went from having only hydrogen and helium — just after the Big Bang — to being filled today with all the elements we have here on Earth that are necessary for life.

The research is based on the Galactic Archaeology survey, called GALAH, launched in late 2013 as part of a quest to uncover the formulation and evolution of galaxies. When complete, GALAH will investigate more than a million stars. The GALAH survey used the HERMES spectrograph at the Australian Astronomical Observatory’s (AAO) 3.9-metre Anglo-Australian Telescope near Coonabarabran in New South Wales to collect spectra for the 340,000 stars.

“No other survey has been able to measure as many elements for as many stars as GALAH,” said Gayandhi De Silva of the University of Sydney and AAO. “This data will enable such discoveries as the original star clusters of the Galaxy, including the Sun’s birth cluster and solar siblings — there is no other dataset like this ever collected anywhere else in the world,” De Silva said. (IANS)