The Stars in Other Galaxies are Generally Heavier Than the Milky Way’s Stars

What are the types of stars in other universes? It seems like a simple question, but it is difficult to pin down because of the time it takes to estimate stellar populations. Astronomers have discovered that distant galaxies tend to have more stars.

Stellar Census

Astronomers don't have a complete census of all the stars in the Milky Way, but they have enough samples to get a good handle on the population. How many dwarf stars there are, how many Sun-like ones there are, and how many giant ones there are are all known to us.

It's hard to repeat this exercise for other galaxies. It's too far away to identify and measure individual stars. We can't guess the populations of smaller stars because we only see the brighter ones. Astronomers assume that the demographic of a distant galaxy is similar to what we see in the Milky Way.

The population of stars in each of the 140,000 individual galaxies was estimated by a team of astronomer using the COSMOS catalog. The Cosmic Dawn Center is an international basic research center for astronomy. There is a collaboration between the University of Copenhagen and DTU Space.

The future fate of heavier galaxies

It has been known for a long time that expecting other galaxies to look similar to ours was not a good idea. No one has been able to prove that there are different populations of stars. Associate Professor Charles Steinhardt is a co-author of the study.

The team found that larger stars were found in more distant galaxies. On the other hand, our own were very similar.

Astronomers use the mass of stars as a guide. The number of black holes that arise out of massive stars can be changed by changing mass. Albert Sneppen, the first author of the study, said that the result means that we will have to revise many of the things we thought we knew.

There are several important ramifications of this work. Astronomers can't assume a uniform population of stars when looking at distant galaxies, which are the youngest in the universe. It forces us to think about how we got to this point.

Now that we can see the mass of stars, we can see a new pattern; the less massive galaxies continue to form stars, while the more massive ones stop birthing new stars. Albert Sneppen believes that this suggests a universal trend in the death of the universe.