Mission Impossible: Observing a Star that Shouldn’t Exist

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This photo shows many stars. But according to astronomers, the star that the arrow is pointing towards shouldn’t be there – it should never have been born.

So what makes this fairly average looking star special? It comes down to what the star is made of. Stars are usually made from a pick and mix of different chemical building blocks, which are called atoms, such as hydrogen, helium, carbon and oxygen. But astronomers recently discovered that the star shown here is made nearly entirely of only hydrogen and helium atoms. Such a star should be impossible, astronomers say.

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