Is a bicycle like a motorcycle? Of course, the answer is it is and it isn’t. Saying something is “like” something else presupposes a lot of hidden assumptions. In the category “things with two wheels,” we have a winner. In the category “things that require gasoline,” not so much. We’ve noticed before that news stories about astronomy often talk about “sun-like stars” or “Earth-like planets.” But what does that really mean? [Paul Gilster] had the same questions, if you want to read his opinion about it.
[Paul] mentions that even textbooks can’t agree. He found one that said that Centauri A was “sun-like” while Centauri B was sometimes considered sun-like and other times not. So while Paul was looking at the examples of press releases and trying to make sense of it all, we thought we’d just ask you. What makes a star like our sun? What makes a planet like our planet?
