Scientists have discovered the most compact binary star system known, consisting of a special type of star.
American astrophysicists have discovered the most compact binary system of extremely cold dwarfs. So far, such systems have not yet been found. The two stars are so close that it takes less than an Earth day to orbit each other. In other words, each star’s “year” lasts only 20.5 hours, writes Phys.
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Astrophysicists from Northwestern University and the University of California, San Diego, USA, have discovered a new binary star system they call LP 413-53AB. It is in the constellation Taurus.
This system consists of two extremely cold dwarfs – a class of red dwarf stars that have a very small mass and a very low temperature. These stars are so cold that they mostly emit infrared light, making them impossible for the human eye to see. And yet, these stars are among the most common stars in the universe.
So far, astronomers have discovered only 3 similar binary star systems, in which the stars orbit very closely together. However, in the LP 413-53AB system, the stars have 3 times shorter rotation periods around each other than similar stars discovered previously.
Another thing that makes this unique star system stand out is that the previous three all have relatively young ages for their stars, about 40 million years ago. But the extremely cold dwarfs discovered are almost the same age as our Sun, that is, older than 4 billion years.
“We hypothesized that such record-breaking systems existed, and we finally found it,” says Zhi-Chun Xu of Northwestern University.
Initially, scientists thought they had just discovered one extremely cold star, but subsequent observations revealed that it was actually a unique, incredibly compact binary star system.
Scientists say that in most binary star systems, the stars make a full circle around each other within a few years. Therefore, it was a real surprise to see a system with an orbital period of only 20.5 hours.
Scientists have found that the distance between two very cold dwarf stars is only about 1% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun (that’s 149 million km, so these stars are only a few times the distance from the Earth to the Moon) or about 1 million km.
Scientists believe that such a close position may be the result of stellar migration, or that the third extinct star in this system may have contributed to this.
“Finding such a star system is very lucky, because they are extremely rare. But we don’t know for certain until now whether they are rare because they rarely appear in space, or because we haven’t been able to find them.” says Chris Theissen of the University of California at San Diego.
Focus He had already written that scientists first discovered an unusual phenomenon in a very strange star. It turned out to be releasing a huge jet of matter flying into space at a speed of 1.6 million km / h.
same Focus He wrote that this is the first time astronomers have seen black holes in the final stage of merging before transforming into an even larger supermassive black hole. By the way, these black holes are tens of millions of times heavier than the Sun.
Source: Focus
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