PARIS - Stars may be unable to grow beyond about 150 times the mass of our Sun, according to a study published on Thursday in the British weekly science journal Nature.
The theory is put forward by Donald Figer of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, who used the Hubble telescope to scan the Arches, a thick cluster of some 100 very big stars near the centre of the Milky Way.
In this region of space that is ideal for stellar growth, Figer saw no star that was bigger than 130 times the mass of the Sun, and suggests a "firm limit" for individual stars of 150 times.
"If there are stellar systems more massive than the limit, then perhaps they are binaries (stars that revolve closely around each other) or products of mergers of lower-mass stars," Figer proposes.
03/09/2005 18:05 GMT