Loneliness is a universal truths in the universe. How universal? The Hubble Space telescope (HST) reveals that even stars can get lonely. And in that loneliness, lonely stars–far away from their parent galaxies–just might die. A lonely death, at that.
Hubble Space Telescope Reveals 3 Lonely Stars
The Hubble Space Telescope reveals images of three different stars getting separated form the galaxies in which they belong and end up dying from the isolation that prevents them from sustaining their energies. Talk about pack animals. When stars are removed from their parent galaxies, survival is shaky if not impossible.
The three massive stars were discovered between 2008 and 2010 thanks to the now infamous Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Mauna Kea, Hawaii. These three stars went supernova in isolation, in-between galaxies. This is odd because usually stars supernova within galaxies of billions of other stars–never quite this alone.
The Emptiness Within Our Galaxies
Today, scientists know very little about the dark, empty spaces that sits between galaxies. Maybe even less than they know about very star-filled galaxies. The separation of stars from their galaxies is actually a pretty rare occurrence. These intracluster stars would have been 300-million-lightyears away from their closest neighbors.
Supernovae Explosion Properties
These three stars were involved in a Type Ia supernovae. A Type Ia supernova is a kind of stellar explosion in which a smaller star is absorbed by a bigger one. Lead by lead researcher Melissa Graham, researchers are the University of California, Berkeley described that the lower-mass white dwarf may have gotten too close and was then broken by the bigger star. A transfer of mass occurred that caused the the Type Ida supernova. In the past, Graham has also previously studied intraclusters of stars and how Type Ia supernovae can occur.
Understandably, stars that are bigger in size tend to explode more and are more easily visible in their supernova explosions. Smaller stars sort of gradually run out of energy and die out that way. This is precisely what happened to the three lonely stars.
