Chinese astronomers discover real-life three-body system unlike Liu Cixin’s fiction
Liu Cixin’s fiction portrayed triple system which is chaotic and doomed
Chinese astronomers have found a real yet rare three-star system in a recent scientific breakthrough. And the most interesting thing is that it is not like chaotic and doomed fictional worlds portrayed in Liu Cixin’s science fiction Three Body Problem.
Researchers made this discovery using FAST, Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope which is the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, located in southwestern China.
The system features two dead stars and one "living" star engaged in a steady, harmonious cosmic dance roughly 7,000 light-years from Earth.
One of the dead stars is a pulsar spinning at an astonishing rate of over 300 times per second, comparable to the speed of kitchen blender blades. The White dwarf is the dim and burnt-out core of a smaller star, orbiting the pulsar every 8 days.
The third companion is a sun-like star that orbits the inner pair on a much wider path taking roughly 73.5 years to complete.
What makes this real-world triple system so different from a fictional one is its well-behaved organization and symmetrical hierarchy.
