Astronomers discover record-breaking star as small as the moon but with more mass than the sun
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Astronomers have discovered the smallest yet most massive white dwarf star ever seen.
According to a new study published Thursday in the journal Nature, the "very special" star has a mass greater than that of our sun, all packed into a relatively small body, similar in size to our moon. It formed when two less massive white dwarf stars, which spent their lives as a pair orbiting around each other, collided and merged together. At the end of their lives, the vast majority of stars become white dwarfs, which are essentially smoldering corpses, in addition to being one of the densest objects in the universe alongside black holes and neutron stars. In about 5 billion years, our sun will become a red giant before ultimately suffering the same fate.More Related News
Scientists say they've discovered the world's biggest coral, so huge it was mistaken for a shipwreck
Scientists say they have found the world's largest coral near the Pacific's Solomon Islands, announcing Thursday a major discovery "pulsing with life and color." The coral is so immense that researchers sailing the crystal waters of the Solomon archipelago initially thought they'd stumbled across a hulking shipwreck.