New simulations show that hot neutrinos created at the interface of merging binary neutron stars are briefy trapped and remain out of equilibrium with the cold cores of the stars for 2 to 3 ...

Binary neutron star mergers, cosmic collisions between two very dense stellar remnants made up predominantly of neutrons, have been the topic of numerous astrophysics studies due to their fascinating ...

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam develop an accurate model for the detection and interpretation of gravitational waves emitted by neutron stars in binary ...

For the first time, astronomers have spotted a rapidly spinning neutron star that is gravitationally bound to a helium star companion. The discovery of this unusual binary system helps confirm a long ...

Neutron stars and black holes that are part of a binary system sometimes emit strongly in the X-ray part of the spectrum. One of the problems is that the accretion disc (a disc of material destined to ...

Astronomers have identified a rare type of binary star system containing a rapidly spinning millisecond pulsar and a helium star companion, formed via common envelope evolution. Although such systems ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. The first-ever observations of merging binary stars stunned the astronomy community last year, ...

In the late stages of binary neutron star formation, the giant star expands and engulfs the neutron star companion in a stage referred to as common-envelope evolution (a). Ejection of the envelope ...

Almost 25,000 light-years away, two dead stars, each more massive than our Sun, but only 20 kilometers in diameter, orbit one another in less than five hours. This unusual pair of extreme objects, ...

The unexpectedly gentle death of a massive star suggests that it was being robbed by a dense companion lurking out of sight. A Caltech-led team of researchers has observed the peculiar death of a ...