Have you ever heard of a vampire-like star existing in our Universe? If not, then you are missing the story of one of the most interesting type of stars, which are known as “Blue Straggler Stars” (BSSs). They are called so because they appear blue in color and straggle or lag in age behind their ancient neighbors which are already evolved off and dead now. These stars were silently hiding in a spherical house consisting of only old stars, which are known as Globular Clusters (GCs), before they were first discovered in 1953. The discovery of BSSs led the astronomers concern that how come such old age home i.e. GC, harbor these young BSSs. Given their mass (1.2-1.4 times the mass of the Sun) and the current age of the cluster (10-13 Gigayears), these stars should have been dead now unlike the other low-mass old stars which still have enough food to survive i.e. hydrogen fuel to burn. This suggests that the BSSs somehow managed to get the extra food (hydrogen) to remain young and prevent themselves from dying soon. After monitoring these stars with Space and ground telescopes, the astronomers found observational evidence that some of these stars are not single rather they exist in binaries. These results revealed that the BSSs might have gained the extra fuel by sucking mass from their companion star. This phenomenon is analogous to a vampire-like event, hence these types of stars are called the Vampire-like stars.
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