Milky Way is producing stars a lot faster than previously thought: study

The Milky Way is forming stars at a higher rate than scientists previously thought. A recent study at the University of Würzburg in Germany found that the galaxy is producing stars at a rate 2-4 times higher than earlier estimates.

The rate at which stars are born and die plays a role in altering the overall chemical composition of the galaxy. This makes the new finding important. Similar to their death, the births of stars are also super energetic and emit powerful stellar winds which blow particles out into space.

Astrophysicist Thomas Siegert and team's research is disproving the conventional thinking that star creation is a stable process. He added that the star formation rate is very important to understand for galaxy evolution.

"The stars that make up the mass of the sun are actually developing four to eight times annually. And if we counted the number of stars that are not as massive as the Sun, our galaxy would produce between 10 and 20 stars per year," said the study. Gamma rays produced by the radioactive decay of isotopes produced during star formation revealed that the process is happening at a rate of 4-8 times the mass of the Sun per year.

The researchers took a census of the aluminium-26 gamma radiation in the galaxy and made a model to see the likely production mechanism.

NASA theorised that stars are born within clouds of dust scattered across the galaxies. "As the cloud collapses, the material at the centre begins to heat up. Known as a protostar, it is this hot core at the heart of the collapsing cloud that will one day become a star."

The Milky Way was thought to generate stars at the speed of about two suns' worth of material every year. "This is expected to be six or seven stars per year on average because the majority of Milky Way stars are much less massive than the Sun," reported Science Alert.