两颗“死掉的恒星”被锁在永恒的拥抱中

两颗“死掉的恒星”被锁在永恒的拥抱中

These stars have only ever known each other.

这些星星只认识彼此。

When they first formed millions of years ago, they were a pair. They went through awkward adolescence together, their bodies turning orange and ballooning outward as red giants.

当它们在数百万年前首次形成时，它们是一对，一起度过了尴尬的青春期，它们的身体变成橙色，像红巨人一样向外膨胀。

And together, they burned through all their precious life fuel, the process of nuclear fusion that powers every star.

它们一起烧掉了所有宝贵的生命燃料，这是一种为每颗恒星提供能量的核聚变过程。

They became white dwarfs — their outer layers fading, their cores hardening, and their radiant days essentially behind them.

它们变成了白矮星——它们的外层褪了色，核心变硬了，它们的光辉岁月基本上已经过去了。

But their relationship still somehow burns brightly. They remain locked in a timeless, even feverish, embrace.

但它们之间的关系仍在某种程度上明亮地燃烧着，它们仍然被锁在一个永恒的，甚至狂热的拥抱中。

That's the picture scientists paint of a newly discovered pair of dead stars orbiting each other so closely that they fully twirl around one another in just seven minutes.

这是科学家们描绘的新发现的一对死恒星的图像，这对死恒星的轨道如此之近，以至于它们在短短7分钟内就完全绕着对方旋转。

They may have danced together for millions of years, but eventually, these stars will become one. (Photo: Jakub Grygier/Shutterstock)

That’s not to say these stars, which smolder some 8,000 light-years away, are twins. While one star is bigger, the other burns much hotter at around 50,000 degrees Celsius. That's 10 times the heat produced by our own sun.

但这并不是说这些在8000光年外燃烧的恒星是双胞胎。虽然一颗恒星更大，但另一颗恒星在5万摄氏度左右燃烧时要热得多。这是太阳产生热量的10倍。

"It's a really weird binary and that's part of the reason we found it," Burdge told Space.com.

“这是一对非常奇怪的双星，也是我们发现它的部分原因，”Burdge告诉Space.com。

We'll know more about these celestial consorts by the gravitational waves — disturbances in the fabric of spacetime — they emit. But that will take some time as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, or LISA, doesn't launch until 2034.

通过引力波——时空结构中的扰动——我们将对这些天体伴侣有更多的了解。但这将需要一段时间，因为激光干涉仪太空天线(LISA)要到2034年才会发射。

Two stars orbiting each other make up a binary star system. (Photo: Catmando/Shutterstock)

But then it won’t take long for the new gravitational wave-sniffing equipment to tell us more about these incredibly intimate stars.

但是用不了多久，新的引力波探测设备就能告诉我们更多关于这些极其亲密的恒星的信息。