Sun's 'twin' an ideal for alien life...

Sun's 'twin' an ideal for alien life...
Astronomers have found the most Sun-like star yet, and they say it is an ideal place to hunt for alien civilisations.

The star, called HIP 56948, lies a little more than 200 light years from Earth. Its size, mass, temperature, and chemical makeup are all so similar to the Sun's that no measurable differences could be found in high-resolution observations made by the 2.7-metre telescope at the McDonald Observatory in Texas, US.

200 light years is quite a distance, won't be travelling there anytime soon!

Sun-like stars are considered good hunting ground for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), says Margaret Turnbull of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, US. She helped draw up an existing list of about 17,000 high-priority targets for SETI called HabCat.
Starting point

"We don't know that Sun-like stars are necessarily the 'best' for intelligent life, but they are certainly a decent starting point given that we know of at least one civilisation around such a star," she told New Scientist.

Peter Backus of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, US, who is heading the institute's upcoming search for alien life with the new Allen Telescope Array, says the Sun's newly identified twin will be targeted in the search, and was already on the HabCat list.

How do you think alien life would evolve? Does it have to be something to similar to our own star? And even if they did detect extra solar planets around this star, what next?

Argh double post, here is the link to the full article.

space.newscientist.com...