Two massive touching stars in a neighboring galaxy are on course to become black holes that will eventually crash together, generating waves in the fabric of space-time, according to a new study by researchers at University College London and the University of Potsdam. The study, accepted for pub
The smaller, brighter, hotter star , which is 32 times the mass of our Sun, is currently losing mass to its bigger companion , which has 55 times the mass of our Sun. The stars are white and blue as they are so hot: 43,000 and 38,000 degrees Kelvin respectively. Credit: UCL / J. daSilva
The researchers found that the stars, located in a neighboring dwarf galaxy called the Small Magellanic Cloud, are in partial contact and swapping material with each other, with one star currently “feeding” off the other. They orbit each other every three days and are the most massive touching stars yet observed.
PhD student Matthew Rickard , lead author of the study, said: “Thanks to gravitational wave detectors Virgo and, dozens of black hole mergers have been detected in the last few years. But so far we have yet to observe stars that are predicted to collapse into black holes of this size and merge in a time scale shorter than or even broadly comparable to the age of the universe.
Co-author Daniel Pauli, a PhD student at the University of Potsdam, said: “This binary star is the most massive contact binary observed so far. The smaller, brighter, hotter star, 32 times the mass of the Sun, is currently losing mass to its bigger companion, which has 55 times our Sun’s mass.”
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