--- title: "Huge Graveyard of Stars Surrounds Our Galaxy, Scientists Say" description: "Laid To Rest Even stars die eventually. And even stars need a final resting place. Researchers at the University of Sydney endeavored to uncover such a place, searching for the celestial remains of ancient suns that have either collapsed into black holes or neutron stars. What they found — and successfully charted for the first […]" date: "2022-10-05" modified: "2022-10-05" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/graveyard-stars-galaxy-scientists" categories: - "Space" tags: - "Black holes" - "neutron stars" - "stars" - "the digest" --- # Huge Graveyard of Stars Surrounds Our Galaxy, Scientists Say ![There's a whole hidden graveyard of dead stars all around our galaxy, and researchers say they've charted it for the first time.]() *\Image: NASA\* ## Stellar Necropolis Even stars die eventually. And even stars need a final resting place. Researchers at the University of Sydney endeavored to uncover such a place, searching for the celestial remains of ancient suns that have either collapsed into black holes or neutron stars. What they found — and successfully charted for the first time — was a stellar graveyard far exceeding the height of our own galaxy. Publishing their accompanying [study]() in *Monthly Notice of the Royal Astronomical Society,* the researchers aptly call their discovery a "galactic underworld." "The 'height' of the galactic underworld is over three times larger in the Milky Way itself," said lead author David Sweeney, a Sydney Institute for Astronomy PhD student, [in a press release](). "And an amazing 30 percent of objects have been completely ejected from the galaxy." ## Starmy of Darkness Both black holes and neutron stars are formed in the aftermath of a supernova, a cataclysmic explosion that occurs when massive stars collapse in on themselves at the end of their lifespan. The powerful explosion blasts these stellar remnants out into dark regions of space, where they prove elusive to astronomers. But by meticulously simulating the lifespan of the quondam stars, the researchers were able to predict where their corpses ended up. "The hardest problem I had to solve in hunting down their true distribution," Sweeney said, "was to account for the ‘kicks’ they receive in the violent moments of their creation." "Supernova explosions are asymmetric, and the remnants are ejected at high speed — up to millions of kilometers per hour — and, even worse, this happens in an unknown and random direction for every object." ## Spaced Out The charting of this underworld is a fascinating endeavor, but what the researchers found particularly remarkable was its composition. "These compact remnants of dead stars show a fundamentally different distribution and structure to the visible galaxy," said Sweeney. Sanjib Sharma, a research fellow at the University of Sydney who helped chart the graveyard, was also impressed. "I expected that the galactic underworld would be subtly different, but similar in broad strokes," Sharma said in the release. "I was not expecting such a radical change in form." **More on stars:** *[Supercomputer Spits Out Amazing Image of Exploded Star]()* ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()