A team of astronomers has identifieda star of the globular cluster Messier 4 (NGC 6121), in the constellation Scorpio, in which apparently residesthe secret of eternal youth. This large sphere, made up of tens of thousands of very old stars, is one of the closest and most studied clusters in the Milky Way.
Scientists analyzed a new image captured with the wide-field camera of the MPG / ESO telescope located at the La Silla Observatory of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), in northern Chile, which shows many of the stars present in the globular cluster Messier. 4, with the splendor of the Milky Way in the background.
Using various instruments of the long-range telescope (VLT), they studied various stars independently, even separating their light into their component colors, allowing them to measure their ages and chemical composition. In this way they discovered that one of the stars possessesunusual and surprising amounts of heavy chemicals, plus a much larger amount oflithium-a rare element of the group of the lightest- from which one would expect.
The origin of this lithium is a mystery, since as a general rule this element degrades gradually during the billions of years that a star lives. However, the analyzed star apparently keeps the secret of eternal youth, since it has either been able topreserve your original lithium levelsor it has found a way to replenish its own levels by making new lithium.
