(ORDO NEWS) — Scientists have discovered a unique system with three stars in deep space. Once there were four.
The solar system in which we live is unique from our point of view, since life exists in this small part of the Universe. This existence is due to the presence of the Sun, around which all the planets revolve.
But imagine a system with not one, not two, but four suns. The system is tightly pressed against each other, and astronomers assume that there were four stars in the system, until three swallowed up the fourth.
Astronomers have discovered for the first time a unique system that has two double stars orbiting each other and a larger star orbiting the two. HD 98800 lies 150 light-years away in the constellation TW Hydrae.
Binary stars revolve around each other in one day, much like the Earth completes one revolution in 24 hours. The two suns combined weigh 12 times our sun.
“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first of its kind ever discovered. We know of many three-star systems, but they tend to be much less massive.
The massive stars in this triple system are very close together, it’s a compact system,” said astronomer Alejandro Viña-Gómez from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.
Alejandro is collaborating with fellow researcher Bing Liu from China to find answers to the question of how this unique combination of a double set of stars and a larger spinning star formed.
The researchers are baffled by the presence of a third star in a system with a circular inner orbit that circles the two stars six times a year.
The system, due to its high brightness, was first discovered by amateur astronomers who were viewing data from NASA‘s Transiting Exoplanet Survey satellite observatory.
They initially thought it was an anomaly and informed professional astronomers who confirmed it was a unique triple star system.
The two researchers then coded the data and ran 1,000,000 iterations on a supercomputer to evaluate the most likely outcome of this scenario.
“Now we have a model of the most likely scenario for this unique system. But the model is not enough.
And there are two ways in which we can prove or disprove our theory about this formation.
One studies the system in detail, while the other makes a statistical analysis of the population of stars.
If we consider the system in detail, we will have to rely on the experience of the astronomer.
We already have some preliminary observations, but we still need to review the data and make sure we are interpreting it correctly,” explains Alejandro.
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