14 DAY TRIAL // Some 730 light-years away, in the Draco constellation, a seriously hungry star is now eating away at its companion, stripping gas from it and gobbling it down.
Oddly enough, astronomers say that, having studied this binary system with the help of the European Space Agency's Gaia telescope, they found the cosmic cannibal to be merely the size of Earth. In turn, the star that it is consuming is about 125 times more massive than our Sun.
The thing is that, whereas the companion star is rather light, the cannibal, which astronomers say is a white dwarf star, is super dense. In fact, it is estimated that, impressive size aside, the mass of the companion star is just 1% that of the white dwarf that is feeding on it.
The recently discovered binary system, described in a report the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, now goes by the name of Gaia14aae, Science Daily tells us.
Astronomers say that, as the years go by, it could happen that the fiery orbs will get so close to each other that they will end up colliding. Then again, it's also possible that the famished white dwarf will go on feeding on its companion until there is nothing left of it.
“In the case of Gaia14aae, it's not known whether the two stars will collide and cause a supernova explosion, or whether the white dwarf will completely devour its companion first,” they explain.
The system is as rare as one in a billion
What's interesting is that, according to data provided by the Gaia satellite and by other scientific instruments, neither of the two stars that comprise this binary system 730 light-years from us packs any hydrogen. What with hydrogen being the most common element in the universe, this is a tad weird.
Instead of hydrogen, the white dwarf star and its companion appear to contain vast amounts of helium. Researchers believe that, at some point, the stars did pack at least some hydrogen. In time, however, they somehow ended up losing all of it.
Besides, scientists say that the stars that make up Gaia14aae are positioned in such way that, when one moves in front of the other, it completely obscures it from view. Apparently, such systems are as rare as one in a billion, with Gaia14aae being the first ever documented by science.
“The system is a rare eclipsing binary, where one star passes directly in front of the other, completely blocking it out when viewed from Earth,” astronomers say. “The two stars are tightly orbiting each other, so a total eclipse occurs roughly every 50 minutes,” they further detail.