'Mergers may be the dominant channel to produce blue supergiants,' astrophysicist Danny Lennon said.
Some of the brightest and hottest stars in existence may be formed by the collision of two other stars, astronomers have found.The formation of these intensely bright stars, called blue supergiants, has mystified scientists for years.Now, scientists have discovered that most blue supergiants form due to the merging of two smaller stars that once orbited each other in a binary system, according to new research in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
'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,' study author Athira Menon, an astrophysicist at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in Spain, said in a statement.
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