Vampires and collisions rejuvenate stars

A new study has shown that stars known as blue stragglers have been rejuvenated by a sort of "cosmic facelift", courtesy stellar collisions and a process sometimes called vampirism.

A new study has shown that stars known as blue stragglers have been  rejuvenated by a sort of "cosmic facelift", courtesy stellar collisions  and a process sometimes called vampirism.

A team of astronomers used Hubble to study the blue straggler star content in Messier 30, which formed 13 billion years ago and was discovered in 1764 by Charles Messier.

Located about 28,000 light-years away from Earth, this globular cluster - a swarm of several hundred thousand stars - is about 90 light-years across.

Researchers have been studying these stars for many years and knew that blue stragglers are indeed old.

They were thought to have arisen in a tight binary system. In such a pair, the less massive star acts as a "vampire", siphoning fresh hydrogen from its more massive companion star.