A research team led by scientists from the British University of Leeds was able to uncover the mechanism of action of a group of stars that scientists call “vampire stars,” in reference to their feeding on neighboring stars over time.
The vampire star behaves in the same way as a vampire in novels, hence the name, but instead of sucking blood from the victim, this star absorbs hydrogen and plasma from another star orbiting it.
This type of star usually starts small in size, but as soon as it enters orbit with another star (representing the victim), it withdraws its matter and begins to swell. As for the other star, it may turn into a white dwarf star, or explode in the form of a supernova, which Leading to the destruction of both stars in the process.
Gaia data
According to the study, which this team published in the “Monthly Notes” journal of the Royal Academy of Astronomy in Britain, scientists used data coming from the “Gaia” space observatory to learn about the nature of these strange stars.
An expressive image of a star with a disk around it (a vampire star) and a star stripped of its outer parts (European Southern Observatory)
Launched in 2013, Gaia is one of the European Space Agency projects working to create the most accurate 3D map of more than a billion stars throughout our Milky Way galaxy and beyond, monitoring their movements, brightness, temperature and chemical composition.
In particular, the researchers were interested in studying a group of vampire stars that belong to the spectral class “B” stars, which are giant blue stars whose mass exceeds the sun at a rate ranging from about three times to 17 times. Some class B stars are oval and have rings of gas revolving around them. They resemble the rings of Saturn.
Triple stars
The study revealed, after examining a number of these stars over varying time periods (between 6 months and 10 years), that these stars do not exist in binary systems only, but rather in triple systems, that is, three stars that orbit each other in one system.
Watch a video showing one of the ways triple stars rotate around each other:
It seems to researchers that the presence of a third, invisible star is the main reason for turning some stars into a “vampire,” because it gravitationally brings the other two stars closer to each other at a distance that allows one of them to begin pulling matter from the other.
This discovery opens the door to turning scientists’ attention to triple stars (in which three stars revolve around each other) and building a new, more thoughtful astronomy related to them. They were usually neglected in the context of studying stellar evolution. Scientists were more interested in binary stars and built many theories around them. .
And according to statement Journalist from the University of Leeds, this discovery could affect other areas of astronomy such as black holes and neutron stars, which may merge together under the influence of a third unobserved object.
