A STRANGE parasitic object has been spotted around 3,700 light years from Earth and it’s baffling astronomers.
Scientists have several theories on what it could be but also think it could be something totally new that we don’t understand yet.
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One theory is that the object is something called a ‘black widow binary’.
A black widow binary is a dead star that’s rapidly spinning and feeding on a companion star next to it.
Hence the name black widow, a nod to the spiders that devour their mates after sex.
A new study reveals that astronomers have either found the most tightly connected black widow system yet or an entirely new pulsing celestial object.
The rapidly spinning dead star in a black widow binary system needs to feed off the star next to it in order to survive in its current state.
This process blasts out a lot of energy and has been spotted in the Milky Way about a dozen times.
Scientists used space tech at the California Institute of Technology’s Palomar Observatory near San Diego to observe the new black widow binary candidate.
They found it after observing the brightness of 20 million stars and seeing if the light from any of them was fluctuating dramatically.
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This was a new technique and it located known black widows and this new mysterious object.
Scientists have called the object ZTF J1406+1222..
Lead author of the study Kevin Burdge, an astrophysicist at MIT, told Inverse: “All known black widow pulsars have been found because they emit X-rays, gamma rays, or radio waves, but this is the first time we’ve used visible light, the kind our eyes can see, to find something like this.”
What’s unusual about the object is how close the cannibalistic star is to its companion and how there also appears to be a third star in the arrangement.
Astronomers are also confused as to why they haven’t spotted gamma rays or X-rays coming off it yet.
Burdge explained to Inverse: “It is entirely possible that this object could also be something we’ve never seen before and even more exotic.
“The one thing I know for sure is we really have never seen anything quite like this object, and that there is probably a lot more to learn from it and other similar objects that I am finding right now, and that’s what has me so excited about these.”
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