Astronomers observe possible 'cannibalistic' star

It's a star-eat-star universe out there.

A group of astronomers published a new study with the Royal Astronomical Society this week in which they hypothesize that a star nicknamed "Nasty 1" is being subjected to "sloppy stellar cannibalism" by a second star buried in its hydrogen-dominated outer layers, NBC News reports.

Nasty 1 is a Wolf-Rayet, a huge type of star that begins its life with nearly 20 times the sun's mass. But those outer layers eventually disappear, leaving the star's core susceptible to space. So astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope were surprised to observe a unique gas disk nearly three trillion miles wide encompassing Nasty 1. The discovery is leading scientists to think a second Wolf-Rayet star located within that disk is causing a "mass-transfer process."

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The study's authors say they hope to learn more about the process by "catching binary stars in this short-lived phase."