A new study published in the journal Nature Communications talks about what scientists call “glitch” of the stars. These are large structural variations that occur in the inner cores of red giants and, after studying the phenomenon well, insiders have found more oddities than expected.
In particular there are celestial bodies, called “Red clump”, which are used for determine the distance and extent of the surrounding galaxies; in a nutshell they are essential to understanding and mapping our universe. For this very reason, scientists have been amazed by the variations in their core structures.
“TOBy analyzing these variations, we can use them to obtain not only global parameters of the star, but also information about the precise structure of those objects.‘, said lead author of the study Mathieu Vrard in a press release. 359 red giants were analyzed and 24 of them showed signs of these glitches at some point in their life.
We are talking about 7% of the samples studied, a very large proportion on a cosmic scale. Moreover, the science behind this phenomenon is unclear. Flaws are a normal part of star evolution, scientists say, but most of them are too insignificant to notice; precisely for this reason the defects found are “temporarily smoothed out by some unknown physical process leading to intermittent changes in the structure of the nucleus”, finally states the study.
