Old Smoker’s:
“old Smokers’ A new type of star has been discovered at the center of the Milky Way, scientists claim. These stars have been nicknamed ‘Old Smokers’ due to the ‘clouds of gas’ observed escaping from them. Several red giant stars, which are medium in size, exist throughout the universe. These stars appear to be at the moment of destruction, having run out of hydrogen through the process of nuclear fusion.
The ‘Old Smokers’ stars were identified by an international team of scientists led by Professor Philip Lucas from the University of Hertfordshire. Before this groundbreaking discovery, researchers had been surveying the night sky for 10 years, observing the infrared light of about one hundred billion stars.
This project was part of a long-term survey known as Vista Variables in the Via Lactea, or Triple V. During the study, researchers found 21 red stars near the Milky Way’s center that exhibited mysterious fluctuations in brightness.
“We weren’t sure if these 21 stars were forming as erupting ‘protostars’ or newborn stars, or if a disk or dust shell had formed in front of the star,” explained Professor Lucas. “A third possibility was that they were old massive stars releasing gas, similar to old smokers at the end of their lives.”
However, after analyzing these stars, researchers now believe they are a new type of red giant. Dante Minniti, founder of the Triple V survey and a professor at Andrés Bello University in Chile, stated that these ancient stars remain dormant for years or even decades before blowing their clouds of gas in a completely new way. For years, they appear so dim and red that they often go unnoticed.
These stars are concentrated in the deepest region of the Milky Way, known as the ‘nuclear disk.’ This area contains stars that are richer in heavier elements than those found elsewhere, which facilitates the condensation of dust from gas in the relatively cool outer layers of red giant stars. How these stars evolve into the thick cloud state remains a mystery to the research team. They believe their findings could reshape the understanding of how elements are distributed within the nuclear disk and other metal-rich regions of galaxies.
Conclusion of Old Smokers: Astronomers from the United Kingdom, Chile, South Korea, Brazil, Germany, and Italy were involved in this project. They utilized the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), a telescope built in the UK and located at the Cerro Paranal Observatory in the Andes Mountains of Chile. Along with the ‘Old Smokers,’ the team also discovered dozens of rare stars known as ‘protostars,’ which undergo massive explosions over months, years, or even decades as part of the formation of new solar systems.