Kevin Burdge along with his colleagues at CalTech have found a binary system, a pair of dwarf stars which are going round each other within a cycle of seven minutes. This would be the first time for us to detect a binary going round under 10 minutes. Though they have found something strange about the pair.
The two stars are strange: the less massive one is colder than we’d expect, and the more massive one is far too hot at more than 48,000° C. Burdge and his colleagues plan to use the Hubble Space Telescope to investigate why.
It’s not clear what the future holds for these two objects: they might smash together and merge in about 130,000 years, or one might start stealing matter from the other, slowing down their orbit and pushing them farther apart.
However, the team has a better solution in finding out the answer to that question. Instead of waiting 130,000 years, they simply need to find other binaries and see if there is one on the verge of merging. If they can't find one, then there is a good chance that such systems don't merge.
(Image credit: NASA/SPL)
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that is a stranger...thing
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