(GeoBeats via AOL) Astronomers have identified 9 monstrously large stars in a young cluster known as R136, and each of them has a mass that is at least 100 times greater than our own star.
According to NASA, the super-sized glowing orbs are the largest sample discovered thus far. Combined, they shine 30 million times brighter than the sun.
Prior to 2010 it wasn’t believed the existence of such massive stellar bodies was possible, but the discovery of several that year proved otherwise. However, scientists are still grappling with how they manage to come into being.
Saida Caballero-Nieves, one of the co-authors of the study, said about the recent find, “There have been suggestions that these monsters result from the merger of less extreme stars in close binary systems. From what we know…this scenario can’t account for all the really massive stars that we see in R136, so it would appear that such stars can originate from the star formation process.”