Can we track the Sun's galactic orbit and find sister stars?

[emc2cracker]

our suns galactic orbit??

Friends,

I have always heard that it would be almost impossible to track the path of the sun through the galaxy. Yet I have come across this paper:

ICE AGE EPOCHS AND THE SUN’S PATH THROUGH THE GALAXY
D. R. Gies and J. W. Helsel
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy, Georgia State University, P.O. Box 4106,
Atlanta, GA 30302-4106; gies@chara.gsu.edu, helsel@chara.gsu.edu
Receivved 2005 January 4; accepted 2005 March 14

http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0004-637X/626/2/844/61945.web.pdf?request-id=8504aff5-e8ba-4c5d-b799-a8fff28864a3

Now I am surprised I have not stumbled on this before, it is several years old now. I am wondering if anyone has taken this a step farther.. if we can track our galactic orbit then why can't we find a supposed place of origin for our sun? Can we identify sister stars?

Also how credible is this paper has anyone here studied this and came to any conclusions about its validitiy? It appears mainstream cosmology has yet to take this paper as solid evidence for the orbit of the sun.

I apologize for having a hard time understanding these papers, if I have overlooked these answers its because I am still in introduction to physics and much of what I read I cannot yet understand. Thats why I ask you guys sometimes what seems like stupid questions lol. But I thank you guys for all your help in my self study in physics, without this place I would be lost.

 

[D H]

I am wondering if anyone has taken this a step farther.. if we can track our galactic orbit then why can't we find a supposed place of origin for our sun? Can we identify sister stars?

See "The lost siblings of the Sun" by S. Portegies Zwart, preprint at the arXiv here: http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.0237.

 

[emc2cracker]

See "The lost siblings of the Sun" by S. Portegies Zwart, preprint at the arXiv here: http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.0237.

Wow thank you. I did not know that our solar system was seeded with elements from a supernova shortly after the suns birth. I wonder what impact that explosion had on the formation of heavy elements on the Earth if any impact at all. If indeed we do find our siblings and are able to study planet formation on that star it would tell us much about what that supernova meant to our evolution.

I wonder if nearby stars have already been ruled out as possible siblings? It seems we should stumble across one of our siblings at some point in our galactic orbit though. If only I could live for another 180 million years lol! Thanks for this information this is a great read I"m on my third pass.