Just like corporations, stars, too, can engage in mergers and acquisitions: a new study has identified a pair of white dwarf stars heading toward a merger.
White dwarfs are the hot, superdense (remnants) of spent stars. In a binary system called J0651, two white dwarfs circle each other very rapidly. The binary pairing completes an orbit in less than 13 minutes.
And that already rapid orbital dance is speeding up as the two white dwarfs spiral in on each other. Each year their orbital period shrinks by 0.3 milliseconds. That's actually a pretty dramatic change on astronomical (timescales).
In about a million years, the white dwarfs will get so close that the larger one will start to cannibalize its smaller companion. Before long, the two stars will likely become one. The study appears in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The tightly wound white dwarf binary should also be (radiating) gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of space and time. But today's gravitational wave detectors are not sensitive enough to detect them. That's okay—astronomers have another million years, before things get really interesting, to build an (instrument) that's up to the task.
