Astronomers Discover Galaxy With A ‘Heartbeat’

In an exceptional discovery, a team of astronomers have identified a galaxy with a heartbeat and noticed thousands of stellar pulses in it.

Previously, it was believed that stars always remain stable and unchanged but, now, the new discovery suggests that stars are not only born but they also die and they also have heartbeat. In fact, they undergo significant transformation throughout their life especially in the ending years.

For the purpose of the study, the researchers and astronomers at the Universities of Harvard and Yale examined a galaxy located 53 million light-years away from Earth known as M87, reported TechTimes.

"We realized that these stars are so bright and their pulsations so strong that they are difficult to hide, "said Charlie Conroy, an assistant professor at Harvard, who led the research.

 "We decided to see if the pulsations of these stars could be detected even if we could not separate their light from the sea of unchanging stars that are their neighbors."

They looked at a series of images from the galaxy M87, located in the constellation Virgo, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope over the course of three months.

The team noticed 25 percent of the pixels from the images pulsated in brightness almost as if the galaxy had a heartbeat. They found that the Galaxy M87's stars have an average pulse of one beat every 270 days, reported Phys.Org.

"Amazingly, one in four pixels in the image changes with time," said Peiter Van Dokkum, in charge of astronomy department of Yale University.

"We tend to think of galaxies as steady beacons in the sky, but they are actually 'shimmering' due to all the giant' pulsating stars in them."

According to the researchers, the current model suggests that the pulsations will be stronger in younger galaxies. This means that measuring the intensity and the frequency of the galaxy's heartbeat might offer clues about the actual age of a galaxy. The researchers' next move is to measure the pulse of more galaxies.

The research was published in the "Journal Nature."