Captain, the computer has identified 250 alien stars that infiltrated our galaxy – actual science, not science-fiction Deep-learning software has singled out a group of 250 stars in the Milky Way that appear to have been born outside our galaxy. That's according to a research paper published this week in Nature Astronomy. The oddballs, known collectively as Nyx, were described as a “vast stellar stream in the vicinity of the Sun,” by Lina …
Pretty dreadful space opera junk that definitely shows it's age, but readable escapism nonetheless ... if you can find your way past the misogyny, implied racism, etc. etc. I've often thought that the core stories could make fairly decent movies, especially with today's special effects capabilities.
Stars that have a similar chemical composition obviously come from the same local area, that much is understandable. That that many stars have the same movement characteristics is also an undeniable sign that they have something in common. Finally, we do know that our Milky Way has merged with dwarf galaxies in the past. So fine, we have a bunch of stellar immigrants nearby. Good for Science, we'll learn things.
Now, though, I have a nagging doubt : are we sure our Sun is not also an immigrant ?
I'm guessing that, with all the studying we've been doing on the source of Life in our Solar System, that fact would already have surfaced, but I can't keep from wondering.
Human exceptionalism aside there is, as far as I know, no reason to suspect our solar system is extra galactic
One problem I have with things like this is it seems to assume that anything outside a norm is not of here. I wonder whether there are other mechanisms that could be as validly applied to the Nyx - perhaps they were thrown inwards by a mass anomaly in one of the galaxies arms - just because the universe is 'uniform' now does now mean it always was and perhaps these are bits that haven't been normalised yet.
Whatever , its fun to keep looking even if there's a bloody comet in the way and lots of sparkly satellites.
Off the top of my head: yes, this has been looked at and the kinematics and composition fit a star born in the Milky Way. Astrophysicists do this because they are looking for stars that might have been born with the Sun and clues about the environment that gave birth to it. But we've done so many orbits of the galaxy that everything is spread out and it's tricky to be certain. However I can't recall any suggestion we are anything other that a galactic native.
I'm not sure how you can say that at all. Population III stars are practically defined to both nigh-identical in chemistry & from literally all over the universe.
Certainly, there will be much more variability in population I stars, but even then, there's really not a lot of room to play with.
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