Summary
October 22, 2015
The European South Observatory has announced that they have discovered an unusual binary star system in which the two stars are orbiting each other so closely that they actually touch.
The system is located in the Tarantula Nebula and has been cataloged as VFTS 352. The stars actually overlap a little, sharing about thirty percent of their mass. Individually the two stars are pretty huge, but together they mass about 57 times that of our sun and have a surface temperature of 40,000 degrees Celcius, compared to our own sun's 5500 degrees.
Astronomers at the ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile who discovered the system postulate two possible outcomes: either the two stars will smerge into each other and explode, creating an incredible burst of gamma rays; or they will remain seperete and blow up in a double-detonation leaving a pair of black holes orbiting each other.
Source
Game and Story Use
- In a space-based campaign: a research station is orbiting such a binary to study it; but the system is entering an unstable stage and is about to collapse. The party must rescue the scientists on board the station — or perhaps they are the scientists — before this happens.
- The stars are sentient entities and they really are kissing. Or something.
- Leave the "Big Bang" jokes to your players, please.
- Where local culture regards the local star as the literal body of a deity…