This New ‘Zombie’ Star May Solve One of Space’s Biggest Mysteries
It’s not every day scientists glimpse a new kind of star, but today is one of those days: Researchers with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) have announced the discovery of a new type of star that seems to be the missing link between a normal “living” star and a magnetar—super dense dead stars that exhibit ultra-powerful magnetic fields. The findings could help us to better understand the evolution of one of the strangest astrophysical phenomena in the entire universe.
The findings were published Thursday in the journal Science.
“This star became a bit of an obsession of mine,” Tomer Shenar, the lead author of the study and an astronomer at the University of Amsterdam, said in a statement. Shenar and his colleagues have affectionately referred to the star in question, HD 45166, as a “zombie star” due to its transient existence between life and death.