precious cargo transportation champaign il

Usually, when one of the stars in a binary system burns through its hydrogen and nears the end of its main-sequence stage, it begins transferring mass to its companion star. This was a key finding that helped the team conclude that the primary neutron star ended as a dud supernova, the astronomers said. After cleaning noise from the data, she noticed one simple line in the spectra that suggested the massive star had a highly circular orbit - an unusual feature in binary star systems. In particular, she was plotting the spectra of the sibling star, an analysis of how much light a star emits at particular wavelengths. 'This is not just a simple binary system'Ĭlarissa Pavao, an undergraduate student at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona, found the system while scouring data captured by the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Scientists behind the latest research studied this sibling star to understand the formation of the current star system, as well as what might unfold in its future. The sibling star is massive, orbits the primary neutron star every 60 days, and has a name like a license plate: CPD-29 2176. 'These new results demonstrate that, in at least some cases, two sibling neutron stars can merge when one of them was created without a classical supernova explosion.' 'For quite some time, astronomers speculated about the exact conditions that could eventually lead to a kilonova,' Chené said in the statement. Researchers of the latest study have now increased that estimate to 10, noting that these observations help them better understand the history, evolution and atypically calm deaths of stars in such systems. Moreover, astronomers previously thought that only one or two such systems would exist in spiral galaxies like our Milky Way. The new research is the first time scientists have identified a binary star system that they know will end in a kilonova explosion. The neutron star and its closely orbiting binary companion - a star that the researchers also predict will someday collapse to become a neutron star - mark the first clear example of a star system that will ultimately trigger a kilonova, a cosmic explosion during which two neutron stars merge.Īlthough a kilonova was first detected in 2017, astronomers then recorded only the aftermath of the event, thanks to observations of light and gravitational waves.

An artist's depiction of a binary star system that will eventually end in two colliding neutron stars.

Precious cargo transportation champaign il