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Merging Stars Can Lead to Blue Supergiants

Blue supergiants are a rare type of star that is vastly larger and more luminous than the Sun. They can have 16-40 times the mass of the Sun and put out 10,000 times more radiation. Only a tiny fraction of the most massive stars should become blue supergiants, yet they're more common in the Universe than they should be. A new study has shown that merging stars can account for the discrepancy, turning two smaller stars into a single blue supergiant.

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