MadSci Network: Astronomy |
Globular clusters have 100,000 to a million stars in them in a region of about 30-100 lightyears. The stars in a globular cluster are crowded a thousand times more densely than the stars near the sun. The average distance between stars near the sun is about 3-4 lightyears. On the other hand the average distance between stars near the center of the cluster is only a few lightmonths. But stars are quite small compared to the distance between stars. So even near the center of the cluster, the distance between the stars is still tens of thousands times their own size. That is like saying that if you have an apple in your hand, the next nearest apple is over a mile away. That means the stars are not so tightly packed that they get close enough together to explode. All the stars in a cluster move around the center of the cluster in their own orbits. That means sometimes stars get close enough to each other that their orbits get changed; sometimes the change is enough that a star is thrown out of the cluster. But in order to collide with each other, the 2 stars would have to move exactly towards each other. It is like saying that you want to hit a baseball with another baseball that is over a mile away. It is possible, but that happens only very, very rarely. Reference: Foundations of Astronomy by M. Seeds,4th ed, p. 256; or any other introductory astronomy text book
Try the links in the MadSci Library for more information on Astronomy.