Star cluster discovery stumps astronomers - Inverse

Lurking in the Andromeda galaxy, a group of stars call into question fundamental ideas about how these stellar bodies form.

While surveying globular clusters in the nearby Andromeda galaxy in October 2019, a group of astronomers stumbled upon a cluster that just didn't seem quite right.

The globular cluster Larsen and his colleagues picked is known as RBC EXT8 and it is located in the Andromeda galaxy.

The discovery calls into question how much of these heavy metals are needed to create stars.

These heavy metals were thought to be essential to fuel star formation, especially at the high rates needed to create a globular cluster.

"Our finding shows that massive globular clusters could form in the early Universe out of gas that had only received a small ‘sprinkling’ of elements other than hydrogen and helium," Larsen says.