"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).
Meibom presented his team's findings today in a press conference at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Their results mark the first extension of such observations to stars with ages beyond 1 billion years, and toward the 4.6-billion-year age of the Sun.
Being able to tell the ages of stars is the basis for understanding how astronomical phenomena involving stars and their companions unfold over time.
Knowing a star's age is particularly relevant to the search for signs of alien life outside our solar system. It has taken a long time for life on Earth to attain the complexity we find today. With an accurate stellar clock, astronomers can identify stars with planets that are as old as our Sun or older.
Read the full article at CfA News