Astronomers have found a hybrid of the star after 40 years of searching Bashny.Net

Phil Massey, Lowell Observatory

Astronomers have apparently discovered the first star from the class of strange hybrid stars, confirming theoretical predictions made four decades ago. The star called HV 2112 in the Small Magellanic Cloud, located at a distance of about 200 thousand light-years from Earth.

In 1975 physicist Kip Thorne and astronomer Anna Zytkow suggested the existence of odd objects that are hybrids between red supergiants and neutron stars — the superdense remnants of supernova explosions.

These so-called objects Thorne-Zytkow (TZOs) likely form of interaction, when a red supergiant engulfs a nearby neutron star, the researchers say. TZOs look like ordinary red supergiants. In his statement, Emily Levesque of the University of Colorado: "Studying these objects is exciting because they represent a completely new model of how stellar interiors can work."





The researchers used the 6.5-meter Magellan Clay telescope in Chile to study the light emitted by HV 2112. They found it to be strongly enriched in rubidium, lithium and molybdenum, as predicted by the theory for TZOs. Normal red supergiants produce these elements, but not in such abundance, scientists said. Zytkow, co-author of the study said: "I am very happy that observational confirmation of our theoretical predictions have already begun to appear."

Source: nauka24news.ru/