Technologies

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

Google races to put Gemini at the center of Android before Apple’s AI reboot

Google is using its latest Android rollout to position Gemini as the AI layer across phones, Chrome, laptops and cars.

Google is using its latest Android rollout to make Gemini less of a chatbot and more of an operating layer across the phone, browser, car and laptop, just weeks before Apple is expected to show its own Gemini-powered Apple Intelligence reboot at WWDC.
Ahead of its Google I/O developer conference next week, the company previewed a number of Android updates, including AI-powered app automation, a smarter version of Chrome on Android, new tools for creators, a redesigned Android Auto experience, and a sweeping set of new security features.
Alphabet is counting on Gemini to help Google compete directly with OpenAI and Anthropic in the market for artificial intelligence models and services, while also serving as the AI backbone across its expansive portfolio of products, including Android. Meanwhile, Gemini is powering part of Apple’s new AI strategy, giving Google a role in the iPhone maker’s reset even as it races to prove its own version of personal AI on the phone is further along.
Sameer Samat, who oversees Google’s Android ecosystem, told CNBC that Google is rebuilding parts of Android around Gemini Intelligence to help users complete everyday tasks more easily.
“We’re transitioning from an operating system to an intelligence system,” he said.
As part of Tuesday’s announcements. Google said Gemini Intelligence will be able to move across apps, understand what’s on the screen and complete tasks that would normally require a user to jump between multiple services. That means Android is moving beyond the traditional assistant model, where users ask a question and get an answer, and acting more like an agent.
For instance, Google says Gemini can pull relevant information from Gmail, build shopping carts and book reservations. Samat gave the example of asking Gemini to look at the guest list for a barbecue, build a menu, add ingredients to an Instacart list and return for approval before checkout.
A big concern surrounding agentic AI involves software taking action on a user’s behalf without permissions. Samat said Gemini will come back to the user before completing a transaction, adding, “the human is always in the loop.”
Four months after announcing its Gemini deal with Google, Apple is under pressure to show a more capable version of Apple Intelligence, which has been a relative laggard on the market. Apple has long framed privacy, hardware integration and control of the user experience as its advantages.
Google’s Android push is designed to show it can bring AI deeper into the device experience while still giving users control over what Gemini can see, where it can act and when it needs confirmation.
The app automation features will roll out in waves, starting with the latest Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel phones this summer, before expanding across more Android devices, including watches, cars, glasses and laptops later this year.
The company is also redesigning Android Auto around Gemini, turning the car into another major surface for its assistant. Android Auto is in more than 250 million cars, and Google says the new release includes its biggest maps update in a decade and Gemini-powered help with tasks like ordering dinner while driving.
Alphabet’s AI strategy has been embraced by Wall Street, which has pushed the company’s stock price up more than 140% in the past year, compared to Apple’s roughly 40% gain. Investors now want to see how Gemini can become more central to the products people use every day.
WATCH: Alphabet briefly tops Nvidia after report of $200 billion Anthropic cloud deal

Technologies

Waymo recalls 3,800 robotaxis after glitch allowed some vehicles to ‘drive into standing water’

Waymo issued a voluntary recall of about 3,800 of its robotaxis to fix software issues that could allow them to drive into flooded roadways.

Waymo is recalling about 3,800 robotaxis in the U.S. to fix software issues that could allow them to “drive onto a flooded roadway,” according to a letter on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website.
The voluntary recall is for Waymo vehicles that use the company’s fifth and sixth generation automated driving systems (or ADS), the U.S. auto safety regulator said in the letter posted Tuesday.
Waymo autonomous vehicles in Austin, Texas, were seen on camera driving onto a flooded street and stalling, requiring other drivers to navigate around them. It’s the latest example of a safety-related issue for the Alphabet-owned AV unit that’s rapidly bolstering its fleet of vehicles and entering new U.S. markets.
Waymo has drawn criticism for its vehicles failing to yield to school buses in Austin, and for the performance of its vehicles during widespread power outages in San Francisco in December, when robotaxis halted in traffic, causing gridlock.
The company said in a statement on Tuesday that it’s “identified an area of improvement regarding untraversable flooded lanes specific to higher-speed roadways,” and opted to file a “voluntary software recall” with the NHTSA.
“Waymo provides over half a million trips every week in some of the most challenging driving environments across the U.S., and safety is our primary priority,” the company said.
Waymo added that it’s working on “additional software safeguards” and has put “mitigations” in place, limiting where its robotaxis operate during extreme weather, so that they avoid “areas where flash flooding might occur” in periods of intense rain.
WATCH: Waymo launches new autonomous system in Chinese-made vehicle

Technologies

Qualcomm tumbles 13% as semiconductor stocks retreat from historic AI-fueled surge

Semiconductor equities reversed sharply after a broad AI-driven advance, with Qualcomm suffering its worst day since 2020 amid inflation concerns and rising oil prices.

Semiconductor stocks fell sharply on Tuesday, reversing course after an extensive rally that had expanded the artificial intelligence investment theme well past Nvidia and driven the industry to unprecedented levels.

Qualcomm plunged 13% and was on track for its steepest single-day decline since 2020. Intel shed 8%, while On Semiconductor and Skyworks Solutions each lost more than 6%. The iShares Semiconductor ETF, which benchmarks the overall sector, fell 5%.

The sell-off came after a key gauge of consumer prices came in above forecasts, and as conflict in Iran pushed crude oil higher—prompting investors to shift away from riskier assets.

The preceding advance had widened the AI opportunity set beyond longtime industry leader Nvidia, which for much of the past several years had largely carried the market to new peaks on its own.

Explosive appetite for central processing units, along with the graphics processing units that power large language models, has sent chipmakers to all-time highs.

Market participants are wagering that the shift from AI model training to autonomous agents will lift demand for additional AI hardware. Among the beneficiaries are memory chip producers, which are raising prices as supply remains tight.

Micron Technology slid 6%, and Sandisk cratered 8%. Sandisk’s stock has surged more than six times over since January.