In our rapidly expanding Universe, the lives of stars follow well-worn tracks, fusing hydrogen and then helium before swelling in size until they exhaust their nuclear fuels and collapse, no longer able to resist the force of gravity.
But some stars in the innermost region of our Milky Way, very close to the galactic center, might be carving out their own path, exhibiting strange properties that don’t fit our standard picture of stellar evolution.
New research suggests these anomalies could be powered mostly by dark matter instead of nuclear fusion – with that dark matter ‘replenishing’ the stars and making them practically ancient by comparison.
Their model predicts the existence of a new class of heavy stars that are kept ‘alight’ not just by small amounts of fusion of atomic nuclei, but also by the annihilation of an “effectively infinite” supply of dark matter particles colliding with antimatter.
Dark Branches of Immortal Stars at the Galactic Center