Over 10,000 light - geezerhood from Earth , two mega - hot stars are modify what stargazer know about stellar evolution and how the gassy clump can be construct . The hotshot are unparalleled for their alien surface composition : They are cocooned in carbon and O , the ashen remain of He burning .
The asterisk were recently distinguish by a squad ground in Germany using data from theLarge Binocular Telescopein Arizona and theLAMOST survey . The mavin are dense and burn very hot , with surface temperatures about 10 times greater than our Sun . It ’s their open that make them so special , as they ’re constituted by carbon paper and oxygen , which are produced when helium burns . detail about the discovery of PG1654 + 322 and PG1528 + 025 were recentlypublishedin the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society .
While the stars ’ surface are carbon and O , their core are recall to still be helium , based on their temperatures and radius . That ’s strange .
An artist’s impression of two white dwarfs meeting in a merger.Illustration:NASA/JPL-Caltech
“ ordinarily we expect stars with these surface compositions to have already finished burn helium in their cores , and to be on their way to becoming white dwarfs , ” say Klaus Werner , an stargazer at the University of Tübingen in Germany and go author of the newfangled paper , in a Royal Astronomical Societyrelease . “ These new stars are a severe challenge to our understanding of stellar development . ”
In other password , the exterior of the stars seem to have already undergone nuclear unification , but their cores are still lively nuclear nuclear reactor . ( That secernate the objects from white dwarf , which are diminished compact stars at the very end of their life , free of nuclear fuel . ) The breakthrough of this exotic social system naturally leads to the question of how these champion might have grow . Alongside this squad ’s enquiry isa second new paper , also in the Monthly Notices of the RAS , that explores how the rare stellar division may come out .
“ We believe that the weird aim discovered by Klaus Werner might have been organize through a rare type of stellar merger , ” said Miller Bertolami , an astrophysicist at the Institute for Astrophysics of La Plata in Argentina and lead author of the 2nd newspaper , in an electronic mail . “ We debate in our paper that , under the correct conditions , a carbon - oxygen white nanus might be interrupt and accrete by a companion , forming aim as those happen upon by Werner et al . ”
During a fusion between two snowy dwarf , Bertolami tote up , the more massive target can break the small objective apart with its gravitational pull . Rather than two stars amicably desegregate material to become one star , the interaction may be more like a hand put on a glove , with one star cannibalizing the other .
Going forward , the research worker will need to switch their stellar evolution model to prove whether such unification could actually leave in wiz like PG1654 + 322 and PG1528 + 025 . There are some burn questions that still need to be answered .
More : How Do We Know When the Sun Will Die ?
AstronomyPhysical sciencesStar typesStellar astronomyStellar evolutionWhite dwarf
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