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By Adam Hadhazy
updated 6:38 p.m. ET, Tues., March. 9, 2010
After a decade of mystery, astronomers have now shown that a pair of white dwarf stars spin around each other in just 5.4 minutes, making them the fastest-orbiting and tightest binary star system ever found, the researchers claim.
The record-setting stellar duo, known as HM Cancri or RX J0806.3+1527, offer challenges in explaining how such a system might form. The super-quick stars may also present a great future test-bed for detecting gravitational waves, which are elusive ripples in space-time.
Researchers say the stars in HM Cancri are so near to one another - about a quarter of the distance between the Earth and the moon - that they could not get much closer without smushing together.
Originally posted by Nventual
What happens when one sun eventually gets too close to the other one? Will the star explode or morph into one larger star?
"A five-minute orbit is about as close as two white dwarf stars can get without merging," said Danny Steeghs, an astrophysicist at the University of Warwick, and co-author of a new paper describing the results.