European Space Agency's Gaia discovers strange ‘starquakes’

The European Space Agency's Gaia space observatory has reportedly detected several "starquakes" which are similar to tsunami-like earthquakes.

Gaia which was launched in 2013 studies the Milky Way and has created a map of the galaxy but it has now revealed new information about stars and their chemical composition including the colour, age, temperature and brightness level of stars.

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Gaia spotted starquakes that change the shape of stars, the observation revealed. The agency said the mission had tracked radial oscillations that makes stars swell and shrink while maintaining their shape.

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However, it has also picked up "large-scale tsunamis". Conny Aerts of KU Leuven in Belgium who is a member of the Gaia mission said: "Starquakes teach us a lot about stars, notably their internal workings. Gaia is opening a goldmine for 'asteroseismology' of massive stars."

In a startling revelation, Gaia found that some stars in our galaxy are made of primordial material and others are made of matter enriched by previous generations of stars.

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"Gaia’s data release 3 contains new and improved details for almost two billion stars in our galaxy," the European Space Agency said, adding, "in this data set is the largest catalogue yet of binary stars, thousands of Solar System objects such as asteroids and moons of planets."

The European Space Agency described the starquakes as tiny motions on the surface of a star that change the shapes of stars. Although Gaia was not built for such an observation but it was able to spot "other vibrations that are more like large-scale tsunamis."

Gaia found strong nonradial starquakes in thousands of stars, the space agency said, including "vibrations" in stars which weren't seen before.

Gaia also revealed the largest chemical map of the galaxy coupled to 3D motions from the solar neighbourhood to smaller galaxies, it added.

(With inputs from Agencies)

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