Space & Astronomy

Half of all stars may be outside galaxies

By T.K. Randall
November 8, 2014 ·  19 comments

Countless billions of stars may exist outside of their parent galaxy. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The conventional view of stars in the universe is that they exist within galaxies, but now astronomers have discovered new evidence suggesting that a large percentage of them might actually be situated in the space between galaxies.

The revelation came thanks to NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment (CIBER) which has recorded data during multiple suborbital rocket launches.Scientists believe that violent collisions between galaxies, something that is likely to happen quite frequently, could be responsible for hurling stars out in to the cosmic void.

"The night sky on a planet around such a star would be profoundly boring and black to human eyes - no other stars, or at least very few, no Milky Way band, only distant galaxies," said Caltech experimental astrophysicist Michael Zemcov.

"You might be lucky and see your parent galaxy off in the distance like we see Andromeda."

Source: CBC.ca | Comments (19)

Tags: Galaxy, Star