Vampire Stars
Scattered across our Milky Way galaxy are vampires that truly sparkle—so-called blue straggler stars that maintain the appearance of youth by sucking the life from other stars. Blue stragglers are often found in dense star clusters. These tight bundles are thought to contain stars that all formed around the same time, and the majority of the stars in such clusters are among the oldest in the galaxy. Scientists think the vampires are stealing gases from their neighbors, allowing the small, aging stars to swell in mass and extend their lives by hundreds of millions of years.
