ESO: Final Kiss of Two Stars Heading for Catastrophe

[bystander]

Final Kiss of Two Stars Heading for Catastrophe
ESO Science Release | VLT | 2015 Oct 21

[c][attachment=0]eso1540b[1].jpg[/attachment][/c][hr][/hr][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mndNcAn2WRk[/youtube][hr][/hr]

Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope, an international team of astronomers have found the hottest and most massive double star with components so close that they touch each other. The two stars in the extreme system VFTS 352 could be heading for a dramatic end, during which the two stars either coalesce to create a single giant star, or form a binary black hole.

The double star system VFTS 352 is located about 160 000 light-years away in the Tarantula Nebula [1]. This remarkable region is the most active nursery of new stars in the nearby Universe and new observations from ESO’s VLT [2] have revealed that this pair of young stars is among the most extreme and strangest yet found.

VFTS 352 is composed of two very hot, bright and massive stars that orbit each other in little more than a day. The centres of the stars are separated by just 12 million kilometres [3]. In fact, the stars are so close that their surfaces overlap and a bridge has formed between them. VFTS 352 is not only the most massive known in this tiny class of “overcontact binaries” — it has a combined mass of about 57 times that of the Sun — but it also contains the hottest components — with surface temperatures above 40 000 degrees Celsius.

Extreme stars like the two components of VFTS 352, play a key role in the evolution of galaxies and are thought to be the main producers of elements such as oxygen. Such double stars are also linked to exotic behaviour such as that shown by “vampire stars”, where a smaller companion star sucks matter from the surface of its larger neighbour (eso1230).

In the case of VFTS 352, however, both stars in the system are of almost identical size. Material is, therefore, not sucked from one to another, but instead may be shared [4]. The component stars of VFTS 352 are estimated to be sharing about 30 per cent of their material.

Such a system is very rare because this phase in the life of the stars is short, making it difficult to catch them in the act. Because the stars are so close together, astronomers think that strong tidal forces lead to enhanced mixing of the material in the stellar interiors. ...

Discovery of the massive overcontact binary VFTS 352: Evidence for enhanced internal mixing - L.A. Almeida et al

• Astrophysical Journal 812(2):102 (2015 Oct 20) DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/812/2/102
  arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1509.08940 > 29 Sep 2015

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Click to play embedded YouTube video.

<<Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, internationally released as Cinema Paradiso, is a 1988 Italian drama film written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 62nd Academy Awards.

In Rome, in the 1980s, famous Italian film director Salvatore Di Vita returns home late one evening, where his girlfriend sleepily tells him that his mother called to say someone named Alfredo has died. Salvatore obviously shies from committed relationships and has not been to his home village of Giancaldo, Sicily in 30 years. As his girlfriend asks him who Alfredo is, Salvatore flashes back to his childhood.

It is a few years after World War II. Six-year-old Salvatore is the mischievous, intelligent son of a war widow. Nicknamed Toto, he discovers a love for films and spends every free moment at the movie house Cinema Paradiso. Although they initially start off on tense terms, he develops a friendship with the fatherly projectionist, Alfredo, who takes a shine to the young boy and often lets him watch movies from the projection booth. During the shows, the audience can be heard booing when there are missing sections, causing the films to suddenly jump, bypassing a critical romantic kiss or embrace. The local priest had ordered these sections censored, and the deleted scenes are piled on the projection room floor. At first, Alfredo considers Toto a bit of a pest, but eventually he teaches Salvatore to operate the film projector.

The montage ends as the movie house catches fire (highly flammable nitrate film was in routine use at the time). Salvatore saves Alfredo's life, but not before some film reels explode in Alfredo's face, leaving him permanently blind. The Cinema Paradiso is rebuilt by a town citizen, Ciccio, who invests his football lottery winnings. Salvatore, yet a child, is hired as the new projectionist, as he is the only person who knows how to run the machines.

Salvatore returns home to attend the funeral. Alfredo's widow tells him that the old man followed Salvatore's successes with pride, and he left him something — an unlabeled film reel and the old stool that Salvatore once stood on to operate the projector. Salvatore learns that Cinema Paradiso is to be demolished to make way to a parking lot.

Salvatore returns to Rome. He watches Alfredo's reel and discovers that it comprises a very special montage. It contains all of the romantic scenes the priest had ordered cut from movies; Alfredo had spliced the sequences together to form a single film. Salvatore has made peace with his past.>>