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New Evidence That All Stars Are Born in Pairs

cfa.harvard.edu

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Re: New Evidence That All Stars Are Born in Pairs

#71

Post by simonh »

yshdjfhu4irekf wrote: post #59
umeshunni wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: Based on this model, the Sun's sibling most likely escaped and mixed with all the other stars in our region of the Milky Way galaxy, never to be seen again.

is it possible that it's just on an extreme orbit and we may one day reconnect?

We would easily detect a star closer to the Sun than our known stellar neighbours. Any former sibling star further away from us than that would be affected by the gravity of other stars more than by the gravity of the Sun.

Re: New Evidence That All Stars Are Born in Pairs

#72

Post by MarkMc »

daxfohl wrote: post #64
motyar wrote: post #63

I read it 'Paris'. I need some coffee.

I was just going to say the same thing. I need some beer.

I read it as 'Paris' too.

Actually I expect this is a very common error. "Born in $place_name" has a much higher base frequency than "Born in Pairs", so our System 1 brain screams "Paris!" until System 2 kicks in.

Re: New Evidence That All Stars Are Born in Pairs

#75

Post by anigbrowl »

umeshunni wrote: post #29
acd wrote: post #28

If all stars are born in pairs where is our suns sister sun and earths sibling planet?

From the article: Based on this model, the Sun's sibling most likely escaped and mixed with all the other stars in our region of the Milky Way galaxy, never to be seen again.

Handwavey prediction: we'll detect its location using entanglement within 50 years

Re: New Evidence That All Stars Are Born in Pairs

#76

Post by kjhughes »

motyar wrote: post #63

I read it 'Paris'. I need some coffee.

Same here.

I believe the effect is similar to that of a garden path sentence[1] except instead of discovering a grammatical inconsistency and having to backtrack to re-parse, the grammatical context misleads the lexical level so much so that we "see" 'Paris' where 'Pairs' actually exists. I suspect that the 'P' being capitalized further supports the 'Paris' misinterpretation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence

Re: New Evidence That All Stars Are Born in Pairs

#77

Post by grogers »

MarkMc wrote: post #72
daxfohl wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just going to say the same thing. I need some beer.

I read it as 'Paris' too. Actually I expect this is a very common error. "Born in $place_name" has a much higher base frequency than "Born in Pairs", so our System 1 brain screams "Paris!" until System 2 kicks in.

For me it was the casing. We aren't​ used to seeing "Pairs" capitalized, especially so since it is not the first word in the sentence. Paris however, will always be capitalized, so the brain autocorrects to the wrong word. Even though the title is in headline-case, it still fools you.

Re: New Evidence That All Stars Are Born in Pairs

#78

Post by wruza »

yshdjfhu4irekf wrote: post #59
umeshunni wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: Based on this model, the Sun's sibling most likely escaped and mixed with all the other stars in our region of the Milky Way galaxy, never to be seen again.

is it possible that it's just on an extreme orbit and we may one day reconnect?

What a sunny day it would be.

Re: New Evidence That All Stars Are Born in Pairs

#79

Post by pasquinelli »

jwfxpr wrote: post #38
ngoldbaum wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is silly semantics. Jupiter and the Sun both orbit the center of mass of the Jupiter-Sun system. The article is making the point that for Jupiter and the Sun this point happens to be just outside the surface of the Sun. It's much simpler to say "Jupiter orbits the Sun" than "Jupiter and the Sun both orbit the center of mass of the Jupiter-Sun system". You can think of the former as a shorthand for the latter.

Semantics aren't silly in science, nor in education. I don't think it's so uninteresting as to be worthy of ridicule. It is not, in fact, obvious to the layperson that the Jupiter-Sun System would have a barycenter that doesn't lie inside the mass of the sun. The casual mental model (and all physical models I've ever seen) of the solar system we all share puts a metaphorical or mechanical axis through the center of t…

"It is not, in fact, obvious to the layperson that the Jupiter-Sun System would have a barycenter that doesn't lie inside the mass of the sun."

a point doesn't lie in a mass, it lies in closed surface. ;p

someone, somewhere, might have an 'Aha!' moment from that.

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