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(rèn)識(shí)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(dāng)它們在數(shù)百萬年前首次形成時(shí)，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(jīng)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(guān)系仍在某種程度上明亮地燃燒著，它們?nèi)匀槐绘i在一個(gè)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(xué)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(nèi)就完全繞著對方旋轉(zhuǎn)。

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(shí)要熱得多。這是太陽產(chǎn)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(shí)空結(jié)構(gòu)中的擾動(dòng)——我們將對這些天體伴侶有更多的了解。但這將需要一段時(shí)間，因?yàn)榧す飧缮鎯x太空天線(LISA)要到2034年才會(huì)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(shè)備就能告訴我們更多關(guān)于這些極其親密的恒星的信息。