“This was such a big, glaring hole,” said Dr. Maria Drout. “If it turned out that these stars are rare, then our whole theoretical framework for all these different phenomena is wrong, with implications for supernovae, gravitational waves, and the light from distant galaxies. This finding shows these stars really do exist.”

Can binary stars steal material from each other? This is what a recent study published in Science hopes to address as a team of international researchers examined how the interaction between binary stars can cause one star to strip material from its companion star over time, resulting in one massive star and one much smaller star. While this study could help astronomers better understand precursor signs to supernovae, scientists have only identified one candidate for being stripped of its hydrogen material, despite longstanding hypotheses that one in three binary stars are stripped of their hydrogen.

Our sun actively produces solar flares that can impact Earth, with the strongest flares having the capacity to cause blackouts and disrupt communications—potentially on a global scale. While solar flares can be powerful, they are insignificant compared to the thousands of “super flares” observed by NASA’s Kepler and TESS missions. “Super flares” are produced by stars that are 100–10,000 times brighter than those on the sun.

The physics are thought to be the same between solar flares and super flares: a sudden release of magnetic energy. Super-flaring stars have stronger magnetic fields and thus brighter flares but some show an unusual behavior—an initial, short-lived brightness enhancement, followed by a secondary, longer-duration but less intense flare.

A team led by University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy Postdoctoral Researcher Kai Yang and Associate Professor Xudong Sun developed a model to explain this phenomenon, which was published today in The Astrophysical Journal.

A recent analysis of a peculiar pair of galaxies located billions of light-years away suggests the possibility of a cosmic string —a hypothetical feature in the fabric of the Universe. Initially considered distinct, the two galaxies may be duplicated images caused by gravitational lensing, a phenomenon where space-time bends around foreground mass, acting like a lens.

Led by researchers of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, the study identifies a cosmic string candidate, CSc-1, in the cosmic microwave background, the lingering radiation from the Universe’s birth. Cosmic strings, theoretical one-dimensional wrinkles formed at the dawn of time, are believed to be highly dense and massive, potentially extending across the entire Universe.

Observationally proving cosmic strings is challenging because their effects can resemble other phenomena. However, minute differences in their impact distinguish them. The researchers focused on a galaxy pair, SDSSJ110429, within CSc-1 as a potential cosmic string signature. Gravitational lensing typically involves a foreground mass causing observable distortions, but SDSSJ110429 lacks evident foreground mass or distorted light.