Chinese astronomers find real 3-body system. It is not what Liu Cixin thinks
In author and computer engineer Liu Cixin’s science fiction hit The Three-Body Problem, three suns throw a doomed world into chaos. Chinese astronomers say they have found a real three-star system that is far better behaved. Using FAST, the world’s biggest single-dish radio telescope in southwestern China, the researchers found two dead stars and a “living” one locked in a steady cosmic dance…
Chinese astronomers have discovered a real three-star system, unlike the chaotic three-sun world depicted in Liu Cixin's science fiction novel The Three-Body Problem. Utilizing FAST, the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, researchers observed a pulsar, a white dwarf, and a sun-like star locked in a steady cosmic dance approximately 7,000 light-years away.
The pulsar, spinning over 300 times per second, whirls around the white dwarf every eight days, while the sun-like star orbits the duo once every 73.5 years. This system, only the second of its kind known, provides a unique opportunity to study the evolution of triple-star systems and test theories of gravity, such as Einstein's strong equivalence principle.
The pulsar's unusual slowing down was initially puzzling but was later attributed to the gravitational influence of the sun-like star, which completes its orbit around the pair in about 2036.
Written by urgent.news from Reuters Business via SCMP's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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