The authors believe that these nine stars received elevated amounts of lithium sometime earlier. Eight of them have metal contents comparable to the Sun (-0.4 to 0.4 dex).
The stars studied have radii ranging from 0.89 to 2.51 solar radii, and masses ranging from 0.78 to 1.6, compared to our closest star. The temperatures of the stars range from 4,800 °C to 5,500 °C, except for the hottest star, UCAC4 629-030411, which has a temperature of 6,500 °C.
Four of them, namely UCAC4 440-009448, UCAC4 441-011058, UCAC4 451-011087 and UCAC4 606-009417, are young stars. They contain more than 3.8 dex of lithium, about three times the upper limit value for young stars.
Astronomers believe that such a high content is due to the fact that the stars are rotating very rapidly and there is active accretion of circumstellar matter. On average, the rotation speed is 15 km/s.
Further research is needed to confirm this information, the authors note.
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