A fountain of youth is feeding the stars at the core of our galaxy

Stars at the centre of our galaxy appear younger even though they are quite old, a team of researchers has stated in a paper. These stars appear to be feeding off an unlikely source, a team of scientists from Stanford and Stockholm Universities that studied the stars have claimed. A massive black hole lies at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy and the stars at the core are thriving in an unfavourable environment where new stars should not ideally be birthed. So what is keeping them young?

The scientists say that dark matter is acting like a fountain of youth for these stars. Isabelle John, a doctoral student in astrophysics at Stockholm University, tried to understand if dark matter was what was keeping these stars young.

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How does dark matter keep these stars young?

They ran computer simulations which revealed that these stars aren't as young as they might appear, and are glowing as bright as they are because of dark matter. These so-called young stars capture dark matter particles which then collide and release energy that acts as fuel for their youth.

So while these stars have lost their nuclear fuel, they are stable and still youthful because of the energy provided by dark matter particles.

Studies have proved that the stars near the centre of the Milky Way go against the general theories of stellar evolution.

"Our simulations show that if stars can collect large amounts of dark matter, which annihilates inside the star, this can provide a similar outward pressure, making the star stable due to dark matter annihilation rather than nuclear fusion — so stars can use dark matter as a fuel instead of hydrogen," Isabelle John said.

Scientists have also observed that a lot more dark matter is present at the centre of the galaxy, further giving a push to the theory of dark matter keeping these stars young.