Thousands of young stars may need to have their ages re-adjusted by as much as 20 percent for average-sized stars and 50 percent for low-mass stars like brown dwarfs, the scientists estimated. "The lack of age synchronization in Par 1802 suggests a precision limit of several hundred thousand years," the scientists concluded. Eclipsing binaries are very rare -- only about one in 1,000 stars. The researchers made the discovery after 15 years of collecting data on stars in Orion, during which time they found three eclipsing binary pairs. Par 1802 is the only one of the three with equal-mass stars, and it is the only eclipsing binary ever found anywhere with same-mass stars young enough -- less than a million years old -- for physical differences to still be apparent, Stassun told Discovery News. "We were pretty surprised when we first discovered the differences in temperature, brightness and diameter, but in truth maybe we should not have been," Stassun said. "We naively expected stars born at the same time, with the same mass and of the same stuff to look the same, but our current theories of binary star formation don't actually make predictions," he said. "This is really an important new piece of information." Related Links: |
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