Astronomers have discovered three of the oldest stars in our universe that were hiding in our galaxy and travelling in the wrong direction.
According to Newsweek, the MIT researchers detected them in the ‘halo’ of stars that surrounds the distant edge of our Milky Way galaxy.
According to a new paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, these stars formed between 12 to 13 billion years ago.
Co-author of the study, and professor of physics at MIT, Anna Frebel stated, "Interestingly they're all quite fast, hundreds of kilometers per second, going the wrong way. They're on the run! We don't know why that's the case.”
The scientist has dubbed these stars SASS, Small Accreted Stellar System Star.
It is thought that SASS was born when the first galaxies in the universe were formed.
Moreover, the stars are situated about 30,000 light-years from Earth in different locations in a cloud of stars that shrouds the outer edges of the Milky Way.
Frebel further noted, “These oldest stars should definitely be there, given what we know of galaxy formation. They are part of our cosmic family tree. And we now have a new way to find them.”
Frebel pledged, “Now we can look for more analogues in the Milky Way that are much brighter and study their chemical evolution without having to chase these extremely faint stars.”
