{"id":234639,"date":"2026-04-05T02:11:31","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T07:11:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/twos-company-scientists-identify-new-class-of-star-remnants"},"modified":"2026-04-05T02:11:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T07:11:31","slug":"twos-company-scientists-identify-new-class-of-star-remnants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/twos-company-scientists-identify-new-class-of-star-remnants","title":{"rendered":"Two\u2019s company: Scientists identify new class of star remnants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/twos-company-scientists-identify-new-class-of-star-remnants2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In about 5 to 8 billion years, our sun is expected to evolve into a white dwarf\u2014an extremely dense, Earth-sized stellar remnant that has exhausted its fuel and shed its outer layer. But while our sun is a solitary star, research over the past 15 years has demonstrated that binary or multi-star systems are far more common than astronomers once thought. When a dense and compact remnant like a white dwarf is involved in a binary system, it often \u201csnatches away\u201d material from its companion star. This process, called accretion, usually emits X-rays in what is considered a \u201csignature\u201d signal.<\/p>\n<p>Now, scientists from the group of Ilaria Caiazzo, assistant professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), confirm the detection of an X-ray signal in not just one, but two isolated objects called Gandalf and Moon-Sized. Highly magnetic and rapidly rotating, these two objects are called \u201cmerger remnants\u201d as they each formed as a result of a violent cosmic collision. By emitting X-rays in the absence of a companion, they now form a new class of their own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In about 5 to 8 billion years, our sun is expected to evolve into a white dwarf\u2014an extremely dense, Earth-sized stellar remnant that has exhausted its fuel and shed its outer layer. But while our sun is a solitary star, research over the past 15 years has demonstrated that binary or multi-star systems are far [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234639","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=234639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}