Are ‘Immortal Stars’ Feasting on Dark Matter in the Milky Way’s Core?
“Stars very close to the center of our galaxy could be fueled by dark matter in perpetuity,” writes Gizmodo, “according to a team of astronomers who recently studied the distant light sources.”
The group of stars, known as S-cluster stars, is just three light-years from the center of the Milky Way (for reference, we are about 26,000 light-years from the center of our galaxy, which hosts a supermassive black hole at its core). The stars are surprisingly young for their galactic neighborhood, yet they don’t look like stars that simply migrated to this part of the Milky Way after forming in another location…
As reported by Space.com, the research team posits that these weird stars may be accreting dark matter, which they then use as fuel to keep burning. Since models estimate there is plenty of dark matter near the galaxy’s core, the stars are “forever young,” as study lead author Isabelle John, an astrophysicist at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology told Space.com. Effectively, the stars have a long, long way to go before they start running low on fuel. The team’s paper is currently hosted on the preprint server arXiv, meaning it has not yet gone through the process of peer review.
Dark matter is only “seen” through its effects on other objects, the article points out — leading to lots of theories as to where it’s actually located. “Earlier this year, a different team of researchers proposed that neutron stars — extremely dense stellar remnants — could actually be a source of dark matter. Last July, yet another team suggested that the Webb Telescope had detected stars that were powered by dark matter.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
“Stars very close to the center of our galaxy could be fueled by dark matter in perpetuity,” writes Gizmodo, “according to a team of astronomers who recently studied the distant light sources.”
The group of stars, known as S-cluster stars, is just three light-years from the center of the Milky Way (for reference, we are about 26,000 light-years from the center of our galaxy, which hosts a supermassive black hole at its core). The stars are surprisingly young for their galactic neighborhood, yet they don’t look like stars that simply migrated to this part of the Milky Way after forming in another location…
As reported by Space.com, the research team posits that these weird stars may be accreting dark matter, which they then use as fuel to keep burning. Since models estimate there is plenty of dark matter near the galaxy’s core, the stars are “forever young,” as study lead author Isabelle John, an astrophysicist at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology told Space.com. Effectively, the stars have a long, long way to go before they start running low on fuel. The team’s paper is currently hosted on the preprint server arXiv, meaning it has not yet gone through the process of peer review.
Dark matter is only “seen” through its effects on other objects, the article points out — leading to lots of theories as to where it’s actually located. “Earlier this year, a different team of researchers proposed that neutron stars — extremely dense stellar remnants — could actually be a source of dark matter. Last July, yet another team suggested that the Webb Telescope had detected stars that were powered by dark matter.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.