Scientists likely to solve decades-old mystery around formation of ‘brightest stars’

In a new study, astronomers have discovered that some of the hottest and brightest stars in the universe are likely to have been formed by the collision of two other stars.

For years, scientists have remained mystified by the formation of these intensely bright stars, known as blue supergiants.

As per the new research published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the scientists have found that most blue supergiants get formed by the merging of two smaller stars which once orbited each other in a binary system.

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Blue supergiants are the luminous, huge stars which are some of the most massive to be ever found in the universe. They typically are 16 to 40 times the mass of the sun.

These stars have hot surface temperatures and are often 10,000 times more hotter and luminous than the sun.

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In the new research, the scientists analysed 59 early B-type blue supergiants in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.

"We simulated the mergers of evolved giant stars with their smaller stellar companions over a wide range of parameters, taking into account the interaction and mixing of the two stars during the merger. The newly-born stars live as blue supergiants throughout the second-longest phase of a star's life, when it burns helium in its core," said study author Athira Menon, who is an astrophysicist at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in Spain, in a statement.

Slamming of binary stars lead to creation of huge stars: Study

In the research, it was found that these huge stars were created after two binary stars slammed into each other and combined to form one massive sun.

"The results obtained explain why blue supergiants are found in the so-called 'evolutionary gap' from classical stellar physics, a phase of their evolution where we would not expect to find stars," said study co-author Artemio Herrero, an IAC researcher, in the statement.

This theory also goes along with blue supergiants' observed properties across the universe.

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"Remarkably, we found that stars born from such mergers have greater success in reproducing the surface composition, particularly the nitrogen and helium enhancement, of a large fraction of the sample than conventional stellar models. This indicates that mergers may be the dominant channel to produce blue supergiants," said study co-author Danny Lennon, an IAC researcher, in the statement.

The researchers plan to investigate the role of the merging stars in the creation of galaxies and their stars across the cosmos.

(With inputs from agencies)