Found a star that is only 25 seconds a day

Scientists at the University of Warwick (UK) discovered the white dwarf LAMOST J0240 + 1952 at a very fast rotating speed and completed a revolution in just 25 seconds. Interesting engineering Announced October 15th. This means that this star lasts only 25 seconds a day.

LAMOST J0240 + 1952 is located about 2,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Aries and is the fastest rotating white dwarf ever discovered. The earth rotates on its own axis once a day. Meanwhile, it takes an average of a month for the sun or moon to complete a revolution.

University of Warwick astronomer Ingrid Belisoli and colleagues discovered LAMOST J0240 + 1952 by observing the light of a white dwarf near a red dwarf. They found that this brief flare-up occurs every 24.93 seconds, thereby capturing the white dwarf’s cycle time.

Typically, white dwarfs take hours or days to make a revolution for themselves. However, the newly discovered star moves very fast because it is driven by a nearby red dwarf. Belisoli’s team presents new discoveries in the arXiv database.

White dwarfs are among the oldest objects found in the universe. In recent years they have been the subject of many important scientific observations. Last year, for example, neutron stars and white dwarfs helped astronomers prove Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Earlier, astronomers at the University of Warwick revealed direct observations that demonstrate that thousands of white dwarfs in the Milky Way gradually regenerate as they cool for thousands of years. In the future, the sun will pass through the same before cooling in a crystal center. This finding suggests that some white dwarfs are billions of years older than previously estimated. The oldest stars may be as old as the universe. This means that uncovering the mysteries of the white dwarf promises to provide valuable information about the history of the universe.

Tu Tao (Follow Interesting engineering)