兩顆“死掉的恒星”被鎖在永恒的擁抱中

兩顆“死掉的恒星”被鎖在永恒的擁抱中

These stars have only ever known each other.

這些星星只認識彼此。

When they first formed millions of years ago, they were a pair. They went through awkward adolescence together, their bodies turning orange and ballooning outward as red giants.

當它們在數(shù)百萬年前首次形成時，它們是一對，一起度過了尷尬的青春期，它們的身體變成橙色，像紅巨人一樣向外膨脹。

And together, they burned through all their precious life fuel, the process of nuclear fusion that powers every star.

它們一起燒掉了所有寶貴的生命燃料，這是一種為每顆恒星提供能量的核聚變過程。

They became white dwarfs — their outer layers fading, their cores hardening, and their radiant days essentially behind them.

它們變成了白矮星——它們的外層褪了色，核心變硬了，它們的光輝歲月基本上已經過去了。

But their relationship still somehow burns brightly. They remain locked in a timeless, even feverish, embrace.

但它們之間的關系仍在某種程度上明亮地燃燒著，它們仍然被鎖在一個永恒的，甚至狂熱的擁抱中。

That's the picture scientists paint of a newly discovered pair of dead stars orbiting each other so closely that they fully twirl around one another in just seven minutes.

這是科學家們描繪的新發(fā)現(xiàn)的一對死恒星的圖像，這對死恒星的軌道如此之近，以至于它們在短短7分鐘內就完全繞著對方旋轉。

They may have danced together for millions of years, but eventually, these stars will become one. (Photo: Jakub Grygier/Shutterstock)

That’s not to say these stars, which smolder some 8,000 light-years away, are twins. While one star is bigger, the other burns much hotter at around 50,000 degrees Celsius. That's 10 times the heat produced by our own sun.

但這并不是說這些在8000光年外燃燒的恒星是雙胞胎。雖然一顆恒星更大，但另一顆恒星在5萬攝氏度左右燃燒時要熱得多。這是太陽產生熱量的10倍。

"It's a really weird binary and that's part of the reason we found it," Burdge told Space.com.

“這是一對非常奇怪的雙星，也是我們發(fā)現(xiàn)它的部分原因，”Burdge告訴Space.com。

We'll know more about these celestial consorts by the gravitational waves — disturbances in the fabric of spacetime — they emit. But that will take some time as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, or LISA, doesn't launch until 2034.

通過引力波——時空結構中的擾動——我們將對這些天體伴侶有更多的了解。但這將需要一段時間，因為激光干涉儀太空天線(LISA)要到2034年才會發(fā)射。

Two stars orbiting each other make up a binary star system. (Photo: Catmando/Shutterstock)

But then it won’t take long for the new gravitational wave-sniffing equipment to tell us more about these incredibly intimate stars.

但是用不了多久，新的引力波探測設備就能告訴我們更多關于這些極其親密的恒星的信息。