{"id":210881,"date":"2025-04-08T10:25:25","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T15:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/astronomers-discover-doomed-pair-of-spiraling-stars-on-our-cosmic-doorstep"},"modified":"2025-04-08T10:25:25","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T15:25:25","slug":"astronomers-discover-doomed-pair-of-spiraling-stars-on-our-cosmic-doorstep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/astronomers-discover-doomed-pair-of-spiraling-stars-on-our-cosmic-doorstep","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers discover doomed pair of spiraling stars on our cosmic doorstep"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/astronomers-discover-doomed-pair-of-spiraling-stars-on-our-cosmic-doorstep.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>University of Warwick astronomers have discovered an extremely rare, high-mass, compact binary star system only ~150 light years away. These two stars are on a collision course to explode as a type 1a supernova, appearing 10 times brighter than the moon in the night sky.<\/p>\n<p>Type 1a supernovae are a special class of cosmic explosion, famously used as \u201cstandard candles\u201d to measure distances between Earth and their host galaxies. They occur when a white dwarf (the dense remnant core of a star) accumulates too much mass, is unable to withstand its own gravity, and explodes.<\/p>\n<p>It has long been theoretically predicted that two orbiting white dwarfs are the cause of most type 1a supernova explosions. When in a close orbit, the heavier white dwarf of the pair gradually accumulates material from its partner, which leads to that star (or both stars) exploding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>University of Warwick astronomers have discovered an extremely rare, high-mass, compact binary star system only ~150 light years away. These two stars are on a collision course to explode as a type 1a supernova, appearing 10 times brighter than the moon in the night sky. Type 1a supernovae are a special class of cosmic explosion, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}