HONG KONG: Finding the real age of stars is one of the largest mysteries of our solar system. But now, scientists have finally found a way to crack it. Just like humans, scientists say that stars slow down as they age.
For the first time, astronomers proved they can accurately tell the age of a star from how fast it is spinning. The team measured the spin speed of stars that are more than a billion years old, and it matches their predictions.
The finding resolves a long-standing challenge, allowing astronomers to estimate a star’s age to within 10%. “Our goal is to construct a clock that can measure accurate and precise ages of stars from their spins. We’ve taken another significant step forward in building that clock,” says Soren Meibom of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). This study examines stars in the 2.5bn year old cluster known as NGC 6819.
Tesla driverless system to use updated radar technology
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