2017-07-09

Do co-eval stars have aligned spin vectors?

My people tell me that at the Kepler / K2 Science Conference this year, there was discussion of the possibility that stars that are born together have aligned spin vectors (does anyone have a reference for this?). The result is controversial because the spin vector is hard to measure! Indeed, there are only hints, and only of the projection of the spin vector onto the line of sight. But if there is any conceivable signal, I have two suggestions: The first is to replace the physics-driven model with a data-driven model: Are the asteroseismic signatures of co-eval stars more similar than those of randomly paired stars, and if so, do those similarities map onto anything interpretable? The second is to look at the comoving pairs of Semyeong Oh and see if we see such similarities across any reasonable set of pairs. This leads me to ask: How many of the Oh pairs are there inside the Kepler field?

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