Sun's sibling stars could host relatives of Earth life

Search is on for any stars seeded when asteroid collision sprayed our DNA into space

David A. Aguilar (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)

Imagined view of the sky from a planet near a globular cluster of stars. The sun is thought to have formed in a star cluster around 4.5 billion years ago.

By Clara Moskowitz Assistant managing editor

updated 4/10/2012 12:42:21 PM ET

 

Some scientists are searching not just for any life out there in the universe, but for our distant relatives.

Earth may have seeded life on other planets if an asteroid smacking into Earth sprayed DNA into space, researchers suggest. Now a team of researchers is searching for siblings of the sun — stars born from the same parent star cluster — whose planets could have been impregnated with Earth life this way.

MORE: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47006276/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.T4T2Pvkc1k0

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