An international team of researchers, led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has made a groundbreaking discovery about the nature of blue supergiant stars, some of the brightest and hottest stars in the universe. These stars have long puzzled scientists, but a new study has shed light on their origins.
Blue supergiants are incredibly luminous and hot, with masses between 16 to 40 times that of the sun. They are expected to be rare, yet they are commonly observed. The mystery of why there are so many of them has puzzled astronomers for decades.
One key clue to their origin is the fact that most blue supergiants are observed to be single, without a detectable companion. This is unusual, as most young massive stars are born in binary systems. The answer, according to the study, is that blue supergiants are the result of massive binary stellar systems merging.
In a pioneering study led by IAC researcher Athira Menon, an international team of astrophysicists simulated detailed models of stellar mergers and analyzed a sample of 59 early B-type blue supergiants in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.
“We simulated the mergers of evolved giant stars with their smaller stellar companions, 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,” explains Menon.
2024-03-25 00:00:03
Original from phys.org