Inexplicably young stars are barreling through space at breakneck speeds as they circle precariously close to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. This stellar dance may initially appear to be random, but a new study has revealed that these infant stars are moving around in a surprisingly organized manner, similar to swarming insects like bees.
But in the last decade, scientists have also spotted around a dozen more objects intermingled with the circling S-stars. These entities, known as young stellar objects , are just a few million years old and still not fully formed but zip around Sgr A* just as fast as S-stars. In the new study, published June 14 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, researchers analyzed the movements of the YSOs and some S-stars to see how they orbited Sgr A*. This revealed hidden patterns and regularities, similar to swarming bees, which appear as chaotic masses at first glance but are actually highly organized.
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