Stars age in a well-understood way. Nuclear fusion in a star’s core converts lighter elements to heavier ones. At some point, that process ends and the star dies. How long the star lives and how it does so are determined by its mass.

But a recent study says that some stars could be powered in part by dark matter. That could affect how long the stars live, and make them look younger than they really are.

Dark matter accounts for about 85 percent of all the matter in the universe. It produces no energy. We know it’s there only because its gravity tugs the visible matter around it. It may consist of some type of subatomic particle, but no one’s found it.

But if certain types of dark-matter particles ram together, they may cancel each other with a flash. The study says that could impact stars in the center of the galaxy, where dark matter is tightly packed.

Massive stars, with stronger gravity, could pull in more dark matter. That would keep them going practically forever. And it would make them look younger. Lighter stars couldn’t pull in enough dark matter to keep them going. Instead, the dark-matter reactions would blow the stars apart.

A cluster at the heart of the galaxy contains many heavy stars that look young in some ways, but old in others. And the cluster doesn’t have any lightweight stars. That combination could mean that the evolution of the stars in that region is being influenced by dark matter.

Script by Damond Benningfield