How do you valuate the long time of a star ? It ’s not as easy as asking them about   their birthday . measure out the age of stars is an imprecise art if you do n’t have a high - quality scope . So a team of scientists set out to just mensurate the age of stars in the Milky Way and reveal obscure details about their exoplanets .

Víctor Silva Aguirre , from the Stellar Astrophysics Centre , used data from theKepler satelliteto examine sure maven in more detail . The result can be seen in the prepublish land site , Arxiv .

33 stars were cautiously choose from a kitty of 1,200 stars with exoplanets . So how were the lucky prospect choose ? Since the most precise data we have with which to liken these genius is data on the Sun ( by virtue of it being the closest headliner to the Earth ) , the pick out stars had to be Sun - like . This meant that they had to oscillate in a like fashion to the Sun . They had to also be bright enough for the artificial satellite to pick up a lot of detail on its properties ,   including the stars ' exoplanet .

Their brightness , along with other characteristic , can be compared in   a database of other similar stars . This leave scientists to line back from the whiz ' luminosity to an accurate estimate of their   ages . This estimate can be strengthened with asteroseismology .   Stars pulsate , oscillate and generally vibrate . Measuring these pulse through whizz is similar to how geologists gauge the DoI of the Earth from earthquake . The Keplar satellite has been mention these variation in stars for the last four year ; this data allows scientists to track how stars are changing and value different holding of the stars . Knowing these basic inside information about the large nuclear fusion reactors in the universe ( ace ) will hopefully aid us to improve   vim production on Earth . And maybe even   represent our history and get word about our origins .

When referring to the age of a star , scientists tend to equate   it with   the years of the Sun ( roughly   4.57 billion years one-time , give or take 10 million years ) .   The stars were institute to be either down to half the solar long time or 2.5 time the solar age .

As a incentive , each star had terra firma - comparable planets , wee-wee them excellent case studies of the unlike relationships Earth - like planet have with their stars .

locate the satellite was a short more sly than finding the   age of the star : their existence was determined by probe the small variations in the intensity of light emit from the central star . As a planet passes across a star , it obstruct out some of the emitted light , causing these edition . This force can be very subtle , so it has n’t direct to the detection of many major planet ( in fact we only be intimate of the macrocosm of about 2,000 exoplanets ) .

The planets that surrounded the principal studied had exoplanets that were comparable in size to Earth ( between 0.3 and 15 Earth r ) . These planets orbited stars that had an age similar to that of   our Sun : up to twice the solar eld . It was interesting to note that the age of the stars did not affect the size of   the exoplanets : that is to say that it is possible that we can   find earthly concern - sized exoplanets all throughout the history of our wandflower . A singular determination was that some of the planets that were observed are twice the historic period of Earth . In other discussion , when these old planets were the age that Earth is now , Earth was only just being born !

[ ViaStellar Astrophysics Centre ]