Scientists discover biggest ever star

Astronomers have discovered the biggest star ever recorded, which shines 10 million times brighter than the sun and was once 300 times heavier. The giant has been given the catchy name R136a1 and can be found nestling in NGC 3603, a crowded cluster of stars some 165,000 light years away from earth in an area of space known as the Large Magellenic Cloud, which lies not far from the Milky Way in the Tarantula Nebula.
 
It was discovered by a team led by Paul Crowther, professor of astrophysics at the University of Sheffield, who used the European Southern Observatory's aptly named Very Large Telescope in Chile and data from the Hubble space telescope to identify the giant.

Until now the most massive stars ever recorded had around 150 times the mass of our sun, and it was thought that this was as large as they could get. However R136a1 was more than double that mass when it first came into existence.
 
Stars begin life large and decrease in size over time and R136a1 is now only around 265 times the mass of the sun. It has only been in existence for around one million years and is rapidly shedding matter in hot, violent solar winds. It is also a good candidate for a spectacular end, leading to the creation of a supernova, because stars of such high mass do not last long.
 
Recent studies of supernova suggest that super-massive stars such as this specimen can fall victim to huge nuclear reactions at their core that involve the creation of antimatter and even black holes.
 
That scenario is a long way off as far as we humans are concerned, although it could happen in just a couple of million years. In the meantime, we on earth should be grateful that our planet has a smaller star to orbit.

If R136a1 replaced the sun in our solar system, it would outshine it by as much as the sun currently outshines the full moon. "Its high mass would reduce the length of the earth's year to three weeks, and it would bathe the earth in incredibly intense ultraviolet radiation, rendering life on our planet impossible," explains Raphael Hirschi, one of the research team.
 
So far, no fellow astronomers are disputing Crowther's findings and the discovery appears to open a new chapter in the study of giant stars. Crowther says the next step is to find out how such a super-massive star was created. ·