Captan extreme approach between two stars that will eventually melt and collapse – LaRed21 (press release) (Registration)

Astronomy

October 21, 2015 at 11:46 hours

Representation of how the energy reacts to a binary black hole. Photo:. Www.astro.cardiff.ac.uk

This is an absolutely unprecedented situation in the annals of astronomy, and its distance from Earth imposes the opening of many unknowns will be difficult to answer in the short term: the star system called VFTS 352- which is 160,000 light years from Earth

VFTS 352, it is in the Tarantula Nebula, an area of. particular activity where many of the stars in this region is generated. European astronomers Souther Observatory (ESO), working with the so-called Very Large Telescope, now found this star couple, who did not believe could exist within the conditions that maintain. In only twelve million kilometers between one center and another, orbiting around each other at such a rapid rate than an Earth day culminating the tour, something that is increasingly accelerated and lead to inevitable attraction and merging The two extremely hot and bright stars of 352 VFYS, stars.

A new star or a black hole binary

have combined some 55 times larger than the Sun mass and proximity even allowing them to exchange material, which is on the surface above 40,000 degrees Celsius.

The situation is so extreme that astronomers verified the existence of a “bridge” of matter between them, which have already shared by 30% of the material that forms.

Now the key question is who is going to happen in a phenomenon unknown to date. The first option is that the two giants merging in what would be “one of the most energetic explosions in the universe, known as a gamma-ray burst-length”, says one of the discoverers of the phenomenon, Professor Hugues Sana, University of Leuven, in Belgium.

The second possibility, notes that the stars can mix materials and remain compact, preventing the merger. “Both bodies follow a new evolutionary pattern that is completely different from the classical predictions of stellar evolution. For VFTS 352, both members would probably end their lives as supernovae explosions paths, forming a binary black hole system, “explains team astrophysics, Selma Mink, University of Amsterdam, told the newspaper that reproduces ABC of Spain.