Orbiting stars circle each other in minutes

Record-setting duo may be a test-bed for detecting gravitational waves

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.

More at:
www.msnbc.msn.com...

What happens when one sun eventually gets too close to the other one? Will the star explode or morph into one larger star?

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.

He uses the word "merging" and the article says the heavier star is gravitationally stealing matter from its nearby companion , so it may be that one star just gets larger as the other get smaller.

Makes me want to puke just thinking about it.

Seriously amazing though. The forces involved are unimaginable.
A strange and wonderful galaxy.

holy tamoly! thats pretty insane...

i just done some really haggered maths, to try and get some conception of the speeds needed for a planet/star to orbit a close by star!

now, these are really rough (lol) ... and basicly, as i dont know any sizes, i used the diameter of the sun (sol), to get round the sun in 5 minutes , the planet would need to be travelling at 116000 km/h !

now, if the stars are bigger, then it woudl be even faster!! smaller stars = slower!

although, i done some more randomly haggered maths, and the earth travels at 107469.05 kmh through space! .. .so really, its not going that much faster... although i dont really get that ... i guess its all relative! (lol)