Romeo and Juliet were a pair of doomed, star-crossed lovers. Now, astronomers have detected a pair of doomed star-crossed stars. Like Shakespeare’s famously unlucky couple, two white dwarfs spiraling around each other are on a course toward destruction.
Astronomers discovered that the stellar partners are separated by a distance of 1/60th the difference between the Earth and the sun, they report in Nature Astronomy. This proximity will eventually destroy them.
When gravity pulls them together they will explode as a type 1a supernova. This rare form of cosmic explosion is thought to be triggered when a white dwarf builds up too much mass, then falls victim to its own gravity. Astronomers have long theorized that two orbiting white dwarfs are the root of most type 1a supernova explosions.
This is the first sighting of such a phenomenon. Although astronomers had long predicted it, actually witnessing it provided a thrill.
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