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Space

We may finally know how impossible stars at our galaxy's centre formed

The centre of the Milky Way is home to more than 100 young stars that shouldn’t exist. Researchers may have now finally figured out how they formed

By Leah Crane

8 November 2022

A glittering multitude of stars

There is a mystery surrounding some of the stars in the centre of the Milky Way

ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Cohen

The centre of our galaxy is home to a strange cohort of stars that should never have existed, and we may now know how they formed. The gravity in this area, next to the supermassive black hole at the middle of the Milky Way, is so powerful that it should disrupt any clouds dense enough to begin turning into stars, but the shock wave from another star’s violent demise could have given those nascent stars a window of opportunity.…

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