Astronomers find star slowly accreting brown dwarf in ZTF J0440+2325
Astronomers just found a star in the ZTF J0440+2325 system, about 300 light-years away, slowly "eating" a brown dwarf companion.
The star is pulling in material at a wild rate: think 5.2 billion quarter-pounder burgers every second!
This is the first time scientists have caught a low-mass star in such a long-term cosmic meal, which could go on for billions of years.
Steady transfer in 87-minute orbit
Here's what makes it cool: the brown dwarf orbits its much heavier star every 87 minutes, and instead of chaos, there's a steady transfer of material between them, something rarely seen with bigger space objects.
This unique find opens up new ways to study how stars and brown dwarfs interact over time.
The research was conducted by Kevin Burdge and Aaron Householder of MIT and published in Nature Astronomy.