The pair of 'dancers' spin the fastest in the universe

Astronomers have found a pair of white dwarfs that take only 5.4 minutes to rotate around one another. This is the fastest pair of twirling stars that scientists have ever known.

The illustration of a pair of super-heavy twin stars revolves around each other . Photo: theregister.co.uk.

According to Space, an international team of astronomers discovered a pair of stars thanks to the Keck I telescope on top of Mount Mauna Kea, the Hawaiian Islands, USA.

The existence of a pair of stars - named HM Cancri or RX J0806.3 + 1527 - poses a great challenge to the scientific community in explaining their formation process. But they also open up a great opportunity for astronomers to learn gravitational waves.

Danny Steeghs - an astrophysicist at the University of Warwick in the UK - said that the stars of HM Cancri are very close together. Their distance is about a quarter of the distance between the earth and the moon. If a little closer, they can plunge into each other and be destroyed together.

White dwarfs are the remaining core of low and medium mass stars after they "die" (consuming up to nuclear fuel in stars). They are several billion years older than the sun. Paradoxically, the smaller the white dwarf is, the greater their mass due to the dense material density.

In the case of HM Cancri, the smaller star (and about twice as heavy as the "partner") draws matter from the star with gravity.

'The heavier star is distorting the shape of the lighter star, making its shape look like pear or raindrop , ' said Arne Rau, astrophysicist of the Institute of Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany. comment.

The matter from the lighter star hits the heavier star. This collision created light beams and energy - things that made astronomers pay attention to HM Cancri more than 10 years ago.

In addition to HM Cancri, the astronomical team also discovered a pair of stars that rotate around each other for 9.6 minutes. This is a pair of stars with a second rapid rotation speed after HM Cancri.