For the first time, astronomers have used advanced algorithms taken from evolutionary biology and successfully applied them to make a phylogenetic family tree of 22 nearby stars. They applied a clustering technique that is widely used in molecular biology to construct an evolutionary tree from which three branches emerge. “It might, but we first need to apply this for a large sample of stars,” said Jofre. From current ground and space-based spectroscopic surveys, we can know the chemical element abundances of thousands of stars, Jofre says. “A tree can be built from these chemical element sequences and interpreted with the help of the Gaia data,” said Jofre.

Source: Forbes February 22, 2017 11:26 UTC