00:00Spotted, it seems like two giant stars were caught in the middle of a romantic kiss.
00:06This sounds a little bit like paparazzi fodder at first, but we're actually talking about
00:11a cosmic twist an international team of astronomers has discovered.
00:17So the life cycle of a solo star is relatively simple.
00:21They're born in vast, gassy areas of space, burn through their fuel, and at some moment,
00:26they explode as supernovae.
00:29But when stars are born relatively close to each other, their gravitational pull can cause
00:34them some troubles and captivate them into what seems like an eternal dance.
00:40In some moments, they come so close to each other that they're practically touching.
00:45These stars may spend billions of years circling each other, but their kiss lasts for a few
00:51million years only, which is just a blink of an eye in cosmic terms.
00:57The lead author of this study was on a mission to find these binary stars caught in such
01:03a cosmic kiss.
01:05He focused his search on the Tarantula Nebula, a beautiful star-forming region located in
01:10the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is 160,000 light-years away from our home planet.
01:18And there it was, the shiny double star system that stood out from the rest.
01:24The two stars found there were pretty big and nearly the same size.
01:28Together, they make a mass of about 57 times larger than that of our Sun.
01:34Before this, we discovered only three other binary systems with a large mass.
01:39And since these two stars were so close to each other, they created an intense gravitational
01:44pull.
01:46This made them orbit each other at a staggering rate of once a day with their centers a mere
01:511.4 miles apart.
01:54With the stars being so close, they formed a bridge where their fuel could mingle, allowing
02:00for around 30% of their total volume to be shared between the two.
02:06Temperatures of this system were crazy too.
02:10At first, it seems the internal mixing of their energy might make these stars live longer
02:15as it allows for more fuel to be burned and for longer periods of time.
02:20This is just a temporary benefit.
02:22There are two most likely scenarios for the stars' ultimate fate.
02:27They could merge to form one giant star, which would eventually explode into a supernova.
02:33Or they could each explode separately and live out their remaining years as black holes
02:38orbiting each other.
02:41If they merge, this process would probably take around 600,000 years.
02:47While if they become binary black holes, they could continue burning for another 3
02:52million years.
02:53But both scenarios would ultimately lead to their destruction.
02:57Unless the stars could end up as two separate black holes drifting away from each other
03:02through the vastness of space, there's a possibility for that to happen too.
03:08There's something spectacular stargazers across the globe could see recently.
03:13Jupiter and Venus, the two brightest planets in the sky, ended up so close it appeared
03:19like they were about to collide, or as if they were kissing too.
03:23At least that's what it looked like from here on Earth.
03:26In real terms, they're still 400 million miles away from each other.
03:31Here's another interesting thing astronomers like to talk about.
03:34G-objects.
03:36G-objects are celestial objects that look like clouds of dust and gas, but behave like
03:42stars.
03:43At the center of our galaxy, there's a supermassive black hole.
03:48It's 4 million times the mass of our sun.
03:51And recently, scientists found out there are two mysterious G-objects that hang out pretty
03:57close to that black hole, so-called G1 and G2.
04:03The most probable theory is that G2 are two stars that were orbiting the black hole in
04:08tandem and merged into an extremely large star cloaked in unusually thick gas and dust.
04:16During G2's closest approach to the black hole, it showed a strange signature.
04:22It was elongated and much of its gas was torn apart.
04:26As it got closer to the black hole, it lost its outer shell, and now it's getting more
04:31compact again.
04:34The thing that has everyone excited about the G-objects is the material that gets pulled
04:39off of them by tidal forces as they sweep by the central black hole.
04:44This material must inevitably fall into the black hole, and the result is an impressive
04:49fireworks show.
04:51This happens because the material eaten by the black hole will heat up and emit radiation
04:56before it disappears across the event horizon.
05:00An event horizon is that scary boundary around a black hole from which nothing can escape.
05:07Now it seems scientists have discovered four more G-objects, and they're all located within
05:130.13 light-years of this black hole.
05:17And it could be that all of the six objects used to be binary stars that got together
05:23and merged because of the powerful gravity of this giant black hole.
05:29It takes over a million years to finish the merging process between two stars.
05:34We definitely want more G-objects because it's one of the rare opportunities for us
05:39to study how things behave near a supermassive black hole without being swallowed...yet.
05:48Have you heard of variable stars?
05:51Look up at the sky.
05:52We often think of the stars as unchanging, eternal lights.
05:56Yes, some stars might appear constant, but others change in brightness over time, which
06:02is why we call them variable stars.
06:05Some of them dim and brighten again over days, months, or even years.
06:10We can't see it with the naked eye.
06:12We're talking about changes astronomers can only notice using equipment and over longer
06:17periods.
06:20And how about vampire stars?
06:23Imagine two stars, a red giant and a white dwarf, in a binary system, swirling around
06:29each other like cosmic ballet dancers.
06:32The red giant, which used to be a vibrant and fiery star, now has aged and grown tired.
06:39Its outer layers of hydrogen, which were once held tightly by its gravity, have now weakened,
06:44making it vulnerable to the smaller, denser white dwarf.
06:48The white dwarf, known as the vampire star, thirsts for the hydrogen fuel that its larger
06:54sibling holds, and it sees a great chance there.
06:59As they spin together, the vampire star uses its powerful gravitational force to steal
07:04the hydrogen from the red giant's outer layers.
07:07The vampire star glows with a blue hue, looking full of energy and more youthful and vibrant
07:13than its aged dancing partner.
07:17Not only vampire stars, the horror continues with zombie stars too!
07:22Sometimes when the red giant explodes, it doesn't completely break up into smaller pieces.
07:28Instead, a white dwarf remnant is left behind.
07:32It's basically a zombie star that was gone at the moment, but has risen back to life.
07:38But this isn't your average zombie, hungry for brains.
07:42No, this star hungers for the very substance that its vampire sibling had been taking from
07:47it all along, hydrogen.
07:50And if the zombie star is close enough to its victim, it will start sucking material
07:54back in to start its core again.
07:57It will become a hydrogen explosive, ready to go boom in a spectacular show of cosmic
08:03revenge!
08:04It's a fascinating phenomenon, we usually won't even manage to detect it, because
08:10these explosions are much fainter than the usual supernovas.
08:14But when it does happen, the resulting blast is truly epic.
08:19And it destroys both the vampire star and its zombie sibling.
08:23It seems vampires and zombies may not be a work of fiction after all.
08:29Not only are we made of stardust, but we're also more similar to stars than we thought
08:34too.
08:35For example, stars also like to hang out with their close group of friends.
08:40Most stars prefer to travel through the universe in clusters.
08:44It's a group of stars that end up bound together by gravitational force.
08:48The stars in the cluster are mostly made of the same age and type, hobbies, and interests.
08:54I guess even they have better social lives than I do!
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