Using ultrasound technology similar to that used in the field of medicine, researchers have come up with a way to determine the age of stars by measuring their acoustic vibrations.
'Infant' stars can be distinguished from 'adolescent' stars by measuring the acoustic waves they emit, says a study.
Acoustic vibrations - sound waves - are produced by radiation pressure inside stars.
The astronomers studied the vibrations of 34 stars aged under 10 million years and between one and four times the mass of our sun.
"Our data shows that the youngest stars vibrate slower while the stars nearer to adulthood vibrate faster. A star's mass has a major impact on its development: stars with a smaller mass evolve slower. Heavy stars grow faster and age more quickly," said Konstanze Zwintz from Institute for Astronomy, University of Leuven in Belgium.
While theoretical physicists have posited before that young stars vibrate differently than older stars, the study is the first to confirm these predications using concrete data from outer space.
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"We now have a model that more precisely measures the age of young stars," Zwintz added, saying, "And we are now also able to subdivide young stars according to their various life phases."
The researchers studied the nebula known commonly as the Christmas Tree Cluster. Their data was obtained from the Canadian MOST satellite and the European CoRoT satellite as well as from ground-based facilities such as the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile.
The study appeared in the journal Science.