Using long-term data collected by NASA’s Hubble Telescope and the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO’s) Very Large Telescope in Chile, as well as other telescopes, the researchers measured different bands of light coming from the binary star (spectroscopic analysis). But it’s their mutually destructive relationship that piqued the interest of the researchers. The stars orbit one another every three days and are the biggest touching stars (contact binaries) ever observed. The stars, which orbit around a shared center of gravity and together are known as a binary star, are in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a mere 210,000 light-years away from our Milky Way galaxy. As the universe aged, the levels of these elements have increased, making the phenomenon of merging black holes less common. The black holes we observe today were formed billions of years ago when there were lower levels of iron and other heavy elements floating around the universe. Researchers from University College London and the University of Potsdam, Germany have studied two most massive touching stars in a neighboring galaxy that will eventually turn into black holes and collide, sending ripples through space and time.
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