(ORDO NEWS) — Astronomers have discovered a binary star system whose objects are very close to each other, revolving around a common center of mass in just 51 minutes. This was reported by the British newspaper Independent.
As the publication points out with reference to a study published in the journal Nature, scientists from the United States and Spain for the first time in history have discovered a rare “ultra-close stellar pair” that consists of a “star similar to the Sun” and a white dwarf (dense remnant of the core of a previously burned out star ).
The larger body has dimensions and mass “approximately corresponding to Jupiter”, and the mass of the white dwarf is half that of the Sun.
The larger of the two stars has “such modest parameters” due to the fact that the denser and heavier white dwarf “stealed the outer hydrogen layers from its companion” over millions of years during the accretion process, eventually exposing its helium core, astronomers specify.
As a result, the distance between the objects of the stellar pair was reduced to “tiny sizes”. The results of computer simulations indicate that over the next 70 million years, the period of revolution in the system will decrease more and more and will reach a duration of 18 minutes.
The discovery confirmed the existence of systems in the Universe, the existence of which was previously assumed only in theory, the newspaper concludes.
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