Researchers discovered a sibling of the Sun for the first time; the star may have been born from the same gas cloud "nursery" as our own.
"We want to know where we were born," Ivan Ramirez of The University of Texas at Austin said in a news release. "If we can figure out in what part of the galaxy the sun formed, we can constrain conditions on the early solar system. That could help us understand why we are here."
There is also a very small chance that this relative star could host planets that hold alien life.
In the early days of the universe collisions could have knocked off pieces of planets and flung them into other solar systems.
"So it could be argued that solar siblings are key candidates in the search for extraterrestrial life," Ramirez said.
The star is called HD 162826; it is 15 percent more massive than our own Sun and located too far away to be seen with the naked eye.
The researchers employed high-resolution spectroscopy to determine the star's chemical compositions; the star's orbit also suggested it was a solar sibling.
The findings could act as a "road map" to help researchers determine how to identify more solar siblings in the future. This will be important when new information is available in the future from missions such as Gaia, that are working to create a more accurate 3D map of the universe.
"The number of stars that we can study will increase by a factor of 10,000," Ramirez said.
"Don't invest a lot of time in analyzing every detail in every star," he said. "You can concentrate on certain key chemical elements that are going to be very useful."
Identifying these solar siblings could also help researchers determine how our own Sun formed.
