The identity string field and the tachyon vacuum

We show that the triviality of the entire cohomology of the new BRST operator Q around the tachyon vacuum is equivalent to the Q-exactness of the identity I of the *-algebra. We use level truncation to show that as the level is increased, the identity becomes more accurately Q-exact. We carry our computations up to level nine, where an accuracy of 3% is attained. Our work supports, under a new light, Sen's conjecture concerning the absence of open string degrees of freedom around the tachyon vacuum. As a by-product, a new and simple expression for I in terms of Virasoro operators is found.