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Rare binary star, spotted for the first time, answers a long-standing question

This breakthrough could fill a gap in the stellar evolutionary timeline.

The universe is a star museum. Up close, we have our beloved sun in its middle age. Farther out, we’ll find white dwarfs nearing the end of their days. Peer deeper, and you’ll stumble upon hyper-dense neutron stars on the brink of turning into black holes. Now, for the first time, scientists have uncovered a star exhibit that, for years, has only been a hypothesis.

Technically, the team’s discovery is of a binary star system, or one star orbiting another. In this case, the smaller companion is eating the larger star, and very soon, the sparkly orb being chomped on will become a rare form of white dwarf, or late-stage star, called an extremely low mass, or ELM, white dwarf.

They’ve published a paper explaining their findings in this month’s issue of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Though fascinating in itself, the sighting of the deteriorating binary star could also fill an empty slot in a long-standing cosmic puzzle.

“This is exciting; it’s a missing evolutionary link in binary star formation models that we’ve been looking for,” Kareem El-Badry, lead author of the paper and a researcher from the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement.

Zooming out from the binary star itself, El-Badry’s discovery fills a gap in our knowledge of how ELM white dwarfs are generated in the first place. We know ELM white dwarfs exist, as scientists have already pinpointed them, but these stellar bodies pose a conundrum.

According to astronomical calculations, experts say, for a star to naturally reach the mass of an ELM white dwarf, it would need to have been born over 13.8 billion years ago. The issue is, the universe itself is only 13.8 billion years old — so that doesn’t really make sense with what we know about the cosmos so far.

Therefore, the only way these stars could possibly be formed within the universe’s timeline is if an external force created them. That force, theorists say, could be the gravitational pull of a companion in a binary star system that’s pulling matter away from the other until the latter object becomes an ELM white dwarf. Seems intuitive, but for a long time, that was just a hypothesis.

Scientists have come upon binary star systems called cataclysmic variables where regular, massive stars are being consumed by a companion star. They’ve even recorded ELM white dwarfs with companions no longer consuming them. It’s easy to extrapolate that an intermediate step would involve an almost-ELM white dwarf with a companion star eating away at it, but no one had seen such a sight.

Thanks to El-Badry’s revelatory documentation, the transitional step appears to be proven at last.

Star hunting

El-Badry used a wide array of star data, several astronomical surveys and his own firsthand observations with the Shane Telescope at the Lick Observatory in California to locate the unique binary star. He’d come up with 50 potential candidates of transitional ELM white dwarfs and ultimately zeroed in on 21 options.

“100 percent of the candidates were these pre-ELMs we’d been looking for,” he explained in the statement. “They were more puffed up and bloated than ELMs. They also were egg-shaped because the gravitational pull of the other star distorts their spherical shape.”

Aptly, he compares the importance of this breakthrough to biological studies of organisms. “You go out into the jungle and find an organism. You describe how big it is, how much it weighs — and then you go on to some other organism,” he said. “You see all these different types of objects and need to piece together how they are all connected.”

Like the ever-advancing tree of life, El-Badry’s new evidence of ELM white dwarfs helps to unveil the entirety of our cosmic star gallery. “We found the evolutionary link between two classes of binary stars — cataclysmic variables and ELM white dwarfs — and we found a decent number of them,” he said.

Next, he hopes to delve into the other 29 pre-ELM white dwarf star candidates to enrich the universe’s star museum even further.

Technologies

Anthropic warns investors of AI’s ‘existential risk to humanity’ in IPO prospectus, reports say

Anthropic’s IPO filing dedicates 80 pages to the risks of AI, nearly double the 48 pages it spends discussing its business plans, according to Reuters.

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Technologies

U.S., Iran hold separate mediator talks as Mideast oil exports hit war-time high

Iranian and U.S. officials reportedly met separately with mediators Monday to push for a ceasefire, as Middle Eastern crude exports rebounded to war-time high.

Iranian and U.S. officials reportedly met separately with mediators Monday to push for a ceasefire.

Middle Eastern crude exports rebounded this month to around their highest level since the war began in February.

An outright export ban by Washington on diesel would keep roughly 1.2 million barrels a day at home, and risks overwhelming Gulf Coast storage, according to Kpler.

The building of the destroyed Shajareh Tayebeh primary school is pictured surrounded by rubble in Minab in Iran’s Hormozgan province on August 10, 2026. Six months on, a team of AFP journalists obtained rare access to the school which has remained largely in ruins, its collapsed walls and twisted steel now surrounded by portraits of the children killed as Iranian flags flutter above the rubble. Iran says the attack on the school involved two separate US Tomahawk missiles but neither the United States nor Israel has officially claimed responsibility for the strike. (Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP via Getty Images) /

Atta Kenare | Afp | Getty Images

U.S. and Iranian officials have reportedly held separate indirect talks with mediators on Monday, reviving efforts to end seven months of war as Tehran presses for a response to a revised ceasefire framework and Middle East crude exports climb to their highest level since the conflict began.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met Qatari mediators in New York, where he remained after the United Nations General Assembly, and reportedly said he expects Washington’s reply by Tuesday. “We talked about ideas and how to find solutions to fulfil Iran’s conditions,” Araghchi said, adding that he planned to return to Tehran once a response arrives. “Whenever the Qataris have a response, they know how to get it to us.”

Iran’s proposal, first presented on the sidelines of last week’s General Assembly, calls for a four- to five-day U.S. timeline to release frozen Iranian funds, lift sanctions on Iranian oil and end the naval blockade of Iranian ports, with nuclear talks beginning within seven days. Tehran has tied any reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to those steps.

President Donald Trump had on Sunday called the plan “unacceptable” and rejected it, telling reporters Iran wants a swift deal because of the economic pressure it is under. Speaking at the White House Monday, Trump said U.S. officials had spoken separately with mediators but gave no further details, adding: “We’re going to win. It’s going to go pretty quickly.”

The diplomatic push comes as physical supply data shows the war’s toll on the oil market easing. Middle Eastern crude exports rebounded this month to around their highest level since the war began in February, Kpler data showed. “Middle East crude exports at just under 80% of pre-conflict levels,” the tracking firm said in a note on Monday.

The Strait of Hormuz itself remains far from normal. Kpler’s real-time tracking showed total clearance through the strait at 10,591 kilobarrels a day on Saturday, against a pre-war baseline of 17,133.

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Technologies

Oil prices fall as crude exports recover at Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea ports

Saudi Arabia has restored flows through the pipeline to around 3.5 million barrels per day, according to media reports.

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