New simulations suggest runaway stars may be outcasts from binaries

(PhysOrg.com) -- For at least half a century, astronomers have been perplexed by so-called runaway stars; big monsters that hurtle around galaxies at some thirty kilometers per second without apparent reason. Now however, astrophysicists Michiko S. Fujii and Simon Portegies Zwart describe in their paper published in Science, how they believe that the big stars get their speed as a result of being hurled out and away from binary star couplings that occur within the centers of clusters of stars.

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