Speaker 1: Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos
Speaker 1: with our soothing Bedtime Astronomie podcast. Each episode offers a
Speaker 1: gentle journey through the stars, planets, and beyond, perfect for
Speaker 1: unwinding after a long day. Let's travel through the mysteries
Speaker 1: of the universe as you drift off into a peaceful
Speaker 1: slumber under the night sky.
Speaker 2: I want you to visualize the Solar System right now, specifically,
Speaker 2: picture the orbit of Jupiter. It is this massive, sweeping
Speaker 2: boundary far out from our Sun, hundreds of millions of
Speaker 2: miles into the freezing dark. Now, instead of the cold,
Speaker 2: empty vacuum of space with just a few scattered gas
Speaker 2: giants and asteroids floating around, I want you to imagine
Speaker 2: cramming four and tire blazing stars into that exact same boundary.
Speaker 3: It sounds like a thought experiment designed to deliberately break
Speaker 3: the laws of physics, or you know, maybe the climax
Speaker 3: of a really intense science fiction. But this is the
Speaker 3: reality of a newly observed highly compact quadruple star system
Speaker 3: known as TAFE one two zero three six two one
Speaker 3: three seven. It is not a hypothetical scenario at all.
Speaker 3: It is a meticulously documented cosmic structure.
Speaker 2: The sheer scale and density of this system are staggering.
Speaker 2: We're talking about the most compact quadruple star system ever
Speaker 2: observed to date. And we aren't just bringing this up
Speaker 2: because it's a neat piece of cosmic trivia. Understanding this
Speaker 2: tightly packed, chaotic system actually sheds light on some of
Speaker 2: the biggest questions in astrophysics, things like star formation, the
Speaker 2: intricate gravitational dynamics of the universe, and how these exotic
Speaker 2: stellar objects evolve over billions of years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it really changes your perspective.
Speaker 2: It does. Whenever you look up at the night sky,
Speaker 2: you see what looks like a serene, quiet blanket of single,
Speaker 2: isolated points of light. But the reality is that when
Speaker 2: you were staring at one of those tiny dots, you
Speaker 2: might actually be looking at an incredibly complex multi star
Speaker 2: dance playing out millions of light years away.
Speaker 3: What is genuinely fascinating here is how a system like
Speaker 3: tick one two zero three six two one three seven
Speaker 3: completely subverts our everyday intuition about how planetary instellar systems operate.
Speaker 3: You and I and everyone listening are inherently biased by
Speaker 3: our own solar model.
Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely, we have one dominant central star.
Speaker 3: Right, we have tiny rocky planets closed in gaseous bodies
Speaker 3: further out, all sitting in orderly, widely spaced, predictable orbits.
Speaker 2: It feels safe, predictable being the keyword there.
Speaker 3: Yes, But the universe is incredibly diverse, and in many ways,
Speaker 3: our isolated, quiet little sun might be the exception rather
Speaker 3: than the rule. When we look at this new quadruple system,
Speaker 3: we have to entirely recalibrate our understanding of celestial architecture
Speaker 3: to really grasp what is happening here. We have to
Speaker 3: look at the specific hierarchy of this system.
Speaker 2: Because not all multistar systems are built the same way,
Speaker 2: are they not? At all? The architecture of this particular
Speaker 2: cosmic dance is what astronomers classify as a three plus
Speaker 2: one type quadruple star system. To make that a bit
Speaker 2: more concrete, imagine a grand ballroom. Okay, if we are
Speaker 2: talking about quadruple systems, a lot of the ones we
Speaker 2: know about are what you would call it two plus
Speaker 2: two type systems.
Speaker 3: Right, the binary pairs exactly.
Speaker 2: That's like having two separate couples dancing the walls on
Speaker 2: completely opposite sides of the ballroom. They are aware of
Speaker 2: each other. They are slowly revolving around the very center
Speaker 2: of the room, but they have plenty of space.
Speaker 3: They aren't stepping on ea, shoulders toes.
Speaker 2: That is a two plus two this system, However, the
Speaker 2: three plus one is entirely different. Imagine a tight trio
Speaker 2: of dancers in the very center of the floor, locked
Speaker 2: together in an incredibly fast, intricate salsa, while a single
Speaker 2: soloist dances a slow, wide circle all the way around them.
Speaker 3: It paints a chaotic picture, it does.
Speaker 2: Both setups are hierarchical systems, meaning they have layers of
Speaker 2: orbits nested within each other. But the three plus one
Speaker 2: feels like it should be absolute chaos.
Speaker 3: It absolutely does, and from a gravitational standpoint, it is
Speaker 3: a remarkably rare beat. Yeah, to put it into perspective,
Speaker 3: smaller two star systems binary systems are the overwhelming norm
Speaker 3: when it comes to multiple star systems in our universe.
Speaker 2: They are everywhere.
Speaker 3: They really are. Two masses orbiting a common center of
Speaker 3: gravity is a highly stable configuration. When you move up
Speaker 3: to four stars, that two plus two configuration you mention
Speaker 3: is much more common precisely because it allows for wider,
Speaker 3: more stable gravitational separations. The math works out neatly.
Speaker 2: So the three plus one is the outlier, a huge outlier.
Speaker 3: Before the discovery of t TIK one two zero, three six,
Speaker 3: two one three seven, only two other three plus one
Speaker 3: type systems had ever been observed by astronomers.
Speaker 2: Wait, only two in the entire history of astronomy.
Speaker 3: Only two definitively confirmed three plus one architectures. Yes, that
Speaker 3: is wild, And here is the crucial distinction. Regarding those
Speaker 3: previous two. Both of them were far far less compact
Speaker 3: than this new one. They were spread out over much
Speaker 3: larger cosmic distances, giving the gravitational forces room to breathe,
Speaker 3: so to speak.
Speaker 2: So t QUEK one two zero, three six two one
Speaker 2: three seven has essentially taken this already exceedingly rare architectural
Speaker 2: setup and compressed it into a space that completely boggles
Speaker 2: the mind.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is unprecedented.
Speaker 2: Let's map out those distances and sizes for everyone listening.
Speaker 2: This is where the visualization gets truly wild.
Speaker 3: Let's do it.
Speaker 2: As we said at the start, the entire four stars
Speaker 2: set up, all four massive burning bodies, fits entirely inside
Speaker 2: the distance from our Sun to Jupiter. That is roughly
Speaker 2: four hundred and eighty million miles.
Speaker 3: Which sounds like a lot to a human driving.
Speaker 2: A car, right, But for four stars that is basically
Speaker 2: sharing a sleeping bag. But it gets even crazier than that.
Speaker 2: That inner trio, the three stars doing the rapid salts
Speaker 2: dance in the center. That entire inner subsystem sits entirely
Speaker 2: within an area the size of Mercury's orbit.
Speaker 3: It's almost hard to comprehend.
Speaker 2: Hold on Mercury is basically scraping the paint off our Sun.
Speaker 2: It is only about thirty six million miles away from
Speaker 2: the solar surface. You're telling me three massive stars fit
Speaker 2: in that exact same gap. How are they not ripping
Speaker 2: each other to shreds with great It is.
Speaker 3: A profound balancing act of orbital mechanics. And to understand
Speaker 3: how they survive you have to look at the physical
Speaker 3: properties of those three inner stars. They aren't just tiny
Speaker 3: red dwarfs, which are the most common smallest stars in
Speaker 3: the galaxy. These three inner stars are massive, and they
Speaker 3: run significantly hotter than our own Sun, though they do
Speaker 3: vary in their specific heat and mass. The undisputed heavyweight
Speaker 3: of this entire group is the primary star of the
Speaker 3: innermost binary pair. Astronomers designate this specific star as Star A.
Speaker 2: Sorry, got it.
Speaker 3: It anchors the entire frenetic inner core of the system
Speaker 3: with its immense gravity and its intense thermal output. It
Speaker 3: is the gravitational linchpin keeping the inner trio from flying
Speaker 3: apart or instantly collapsing inward.
Speaker 2: So you have this terrifying, blazing heavyweight Star A locked
Speaker 2: in a tight embrace with a second star, and then
Speaker 2: a third star buzzing around that central pair like an
Speaker 2: angry hornet, exactly all within the space of Mercury's orbit.
Speaker 2: And then you have the fourth star, the soloest out
Speaker 2: on the edge. Tell me about that one, because from
Speaker 2: what I understand, it is drastically different from the inner three.
Speaker 3: It is the outer star is much smaller than the
Speaker 3: chaotic trio at orbits. In fact, it is quite a
Speaker 3: bit like looking in a mirror for us, because that
Speaker 3: fourth star mirrors our own Sun very closely in both
Speaker 3: its physical size and its surface temperature.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is a G type main sequence star just
Speaker 3: like ours.
Speaker 2: It's like having a replica of our Sun, just casually
Speaker 2: strolling around the outside of a triple star bondfire.
Speaker 3: Exactly, and the contrast in their physical makeup is perfectly
Speaker 3: reflected in the rhythms of their orbits. The gravitational forces
Speaker 3: at play inside Mercury's orbital distance are intense.
Speaker 2: Because they're so close together.
Speaker 3: Yes, because they are so close together, and because their
Speaker 3: masses are so significant, those inner stars have to move
Speaker 3: incredibly fast to maintain their orbits and avoid falling into
Speaker 3: one another.
Speaker 2: It is basic orbital mechanics, right. The closer you are
Speaker 2: to a massive body, the faster you must travel to
Speaker 2: maintain centrifugal balance against the pull of gravity held it.
Speaker 3: Their orbital periods, meaning the time it takes for them
Speaker 3: to complete a single revolution around their shared center of mass,
Speaker 3: range from just a few days for the innermost pair
Speaker 3: to fifty one days for the third star circling them.
Speaker 2: A fifty one day year, you would have to celebrate
Speaker 2: your birthday every other month while trying not to be
Speaker 2: incinerated by three suns. It would be absolute visual.
Speaker 3: Chaos, visual and gravitational chaos.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And meanwhile, that outer sun like star takes a
Speaker 3: much more leisurely pace because it sits further out, near
Speaker 3: that Jupiter boundary we discussed, it experiences a much weaker
Speaker 3: gravitational pull from the inner trio. Therefore, it completes its
Speaker 3: orbit around the inner core every one thousand and forty
Speaker 3: six days.
Speaker 2: So you have this frantic, high speed, high heat blender
Speaker 2: of gravity in the center, surrounded by a slow, relatively cold,
Speaker 2: three year long patrol on the outside. That sums it
Speaker 2: up perfectly, which naturally makes me wonder, if a system
Speaker 2: like this is so massive, so dynamic, and burning so
Speaker 2: incredibly bright, why haven't we seen more of them? You
Speaker 2: said there are only two others ever found. Are they
Speaker 2: just that rare or are we just bad at looking
Speaker 2: for them?
Speaker 3: The astronomers studying this system have made a very crucial
Speaker 3: point regarding this exact question. It is highly likely that
Speaker 3: there are actually many other compact three plus one quadruple
Speaker 3: systems out there in the galaxy. Really, yes, the universe
Speaker 3: is incredibly vast, containing hundreds of billions of stars in
Speaker 3: the Milky Way alone, but finding them is fundamentally difficult.
Speaker 3: It isn't just a matter of building a bigger telescope
Speaker 3: and pointing it at the right patch of sky.
Speaker 2: If they just look like one dot.
Speaker 3: Right. Their discovery relies on highly occasional and what the
Speaker 3: researchers call fortuitous properties.
Speaker 2: For tuitous properties, meaning we have to get incredibly lucky.
Speaker 2: It's essentially looking for a needle in a photometric haystack.
Speaker 3: Right. That is a great way to put it, because
Speaker 3: when you look.
Speaker 2: Through a telescope, you don't just see four distinct, beautiful
Speaker 2: little dots circling each other. You just see a blur.
Speaker 2: So how did they actually catch he tips one two
Speaker 2: zero three six two one three seven what was the
Speaker 2: lucky break?
Speaker 3: The lucky break was a combination of the system's sheer
Speaker 3: brightness and a very specific geometric alignment relative to Earth. Okay,
Speaker 3: The details of this discovery were recently published by Timas
Speaker 3: Borkovitz and his colleagues in Nature Communications. Because the system
Speaker 3: is unusually bright, it allowed astronomers to use a powerful
Speaker 3: combination of both photometric and spectroscopic observations.
Speaker 2: But they had to know where to look first.
Speaker 3: Yes, to even know they needed to look at it,
Speaker 3: they had to catch it in transit.
Speaker 2: Okay, unpack that for me. Transit we were talking about
Speaker 2: shadows essentially.
Speaker 3: Essentially, Yes, this is where photometry comes in. Photometry is
Speaker 3: the measurement of light intensity over time. We cannot physically
Speaker 3: resolve the individual stars visually, they are too far away.
Speaker 3: They blurt into a single point of light. But if
Speaker 3: the orbital plane of those stars is aligned almost perfectly
Speaker 3: edge on with our line of sight from Earth, the
Speaker 3: stars will pass in front of one another.
Speaker 2: From our perspective. Okay, I see where this is going.
Speaker 3: When a star passes in front of another, it blocks
Speaker 3: a tiny fraction of the light. We see this as
Speaker 3: a microscopic dip in the overall brightness of that single
Speaker 3: point of light. That is a transit.
Speaker 2: So a light curve is basically like watching a car's
Speaker 2: headlights from a mile away and trying to figure out
Speaker 2: if a moth or a bird just flew in front
Speaker 2: of the bulb based entirely on a fraction of a
Speaker 2: percent drop in the brightness.
Speaker 3: That is a phenomenal analogy. Yes, yeah, you are looking
Speaker 3: for a fraction of a percent of a dip in
Speaker 3: brightness and you are plotting those dips on a graph
Speaker 3: over time. That graph is a light curve.
Speaker 2: That sounds incredibly tedious.
Speaker 3: It is and ground based observation alone wasn't enough to
Speaker 3: untangle a system this complex. They had to rely on
Speaker 3: initial data from space, specifically the transiting exoplanet serve on
Speaker 3: a satellite or tests.
Speaker 2: I've heard of tests, it's the planet hunter. What does
Speaker 2: tests actually do? Just take really big pictures of the sky.
Speaker 3: Not pictures in the way we think of them. Tests
Speaker 3: is designed to stare at massive swaths of the sky
Speaker 3: for we at a time and do exactly what we
Speaker 3: just described. Watch for those tiny blips in light. Oh wow,
Speaker 3: it is incredibly sensitive. During what is known as Sector
Speaker 3: fifty four observations, which took place between July twenty two
Speaker 3: and August four, twenty twenty two, test captured the crucial
Speaker 3: light curves of the.
Speaker 2: System two weeks of just staring.
Speaker 3: For basically two straight weeks, this satellite was staring unblinking
Speaker 3: at this point of light, recording the intricate overlapping shadows
Speaker 3: these stars were casting on each other as they frantically orbited.
Speaker 2: But wait, if they only watched it for two weeks
Speaker 2: July twenty two to August four, how did they know
Speaker 2: about the fourth star you just said? The outer start
Speaker 2: takes one thousand, forty six days to complete an orbit,
Speaker 2: It wouldn't even have made a dent in a two
Speaker 2: week observation window.
Speaker 3: That is exactly why this discovery is such a triumph
Speaker 3: of observational astronomy. The test data was just the first
Speaker 3: thread they pulled to a satellite. It initially just looks
Speaker 3: like a single point of light that is flickering in
Speaker 3: a very strange, seemingly chaotic pattern. The short two week
Speaker 3: window captured the frantic, fifty one day and multi day
Speaker 3: orbits of the inner trio, but not the big one.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: To find the fourth star and to confirm the exact
Speaker 3: nature of the inner three, the scientists had to combine
Speaker 3: the test photometry with archival data and high resolution ground
Speaker 3: based spectroscopy.
Speaker 2: Okay, photometry is the moth in front of the headlight.
Speaker 2: What is spectroscopy.
Speaker 3: Steptroscopy involves taking the light from that single blurry point
Speaker 3: and feeding it into a highly advanced prism, splitting it
Speaker 3: into its component colors or a spectrum like a rainbow.
Speaker 3: Exactly every element in the universe absorbs light at very specific,
Speaker 3: unique wavelengths. By looking at the spectrum of a star,
Speaker 3: you see these dark bands called absorption lines, which act
Speaker 3: like a chemical.
Speaker 2: Bar code a bar code.
Speaker 3: Okay, But here's the magic trick. Because these stores are
Speaker 3: moving around each other, they are moving toward and away
Speaker 3: from Earth.
Speaker 2: The Doppler effect like a police siren changing pitch as
Speaker 2: it drives past you.
Speaker 3: Precisely, as a star moves toward us in its orbit,
Speaker 3: its light waves are compressed, shifting its barcodes slightly toward
Speaker 3: the blue end of the spectrum.
Speaker 2: Oh when it moves away.
Speaker 3: As it swings around and moves away from us, the
Speaker 3: light waves stretch, shifting the barcode toward the red end.
Speaker 3: By meticulously tracking how these chemical barcodes split and shifted
Speaker 3: back and forth over time, the astronomers could measure the
Speaker 3: exact radial velocities of the stars.
Speaker 2: They could see the gravitational tug of war encoded in
Speaker 2: the light itself. They could that is staggering, so they
Speaker 2: aren't just looking at a shadow. They are looking at
Speaker 2: the color of the light, stretching and squishing, and using
Speaker 2: that to calculate the mass and speed of bodies they
Speaker 2: can't even see exactly.
Speaker 3: By combining the minute variations in the photometric light curves
Speaker 3: with the shifting bar codes of the spectroscopic data, they
Speaker 3: were able to mathematically untangle the overlapping signals.
Speaker 2: That's brilliant.
Speaker 3: They could discern four completely separate, distinct gravitational signatures, and
Speaker 3: they could directly measure their individual temperatures, their specific physical sizes,
Speaker 3: and their masses.
Speaker 2: This marks a massive milestone in the field. I mean
Speaker 2: untangling four distinct signals from one dot of light.
Speaker 3: It is a landmark achievement. This marks the very first
Speaker 3: time a three plus one type quadruple star system has
Speaker 3: achieved direct spectroscopic detection of all four of its constituent.
Speaker 2: Stars the very first time.
Speaker 3: Yes, they didn't just infer the presence of a fourth
Speaker 3: star based on a slight gravitational wabble. They chemically and
Speaker 3: visually confirmed the unique light signature of every single one
Speaker 3: of them.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: They tracked the slow three year red and blue shift
Speaker 3: of the outer star alongside the frantic daily shifts of
Speaker 3: the inner three.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you've got these four massive bodies packed together.
Speaker 2: They've measured them, they've confirmed them. My immediate thought is
Speaker 2: how do they even get there?
Speaker 3: That's the million dollar question.
Speaker 2: Did they just randomly capture each other while flying through
Speaker 2: the galaxy or is there a specific origin story? Because
Speaker 2: getting three stars inside Mercury's orbit feels like trying to
Speaker 2: parallel park a semi truck in a compact space.
Speaker 3: To answer that, had to look at the geometry of
Speaker 3: the system, and they found a massive clue hidden in
Speaker 3: the way these stars align geometry. Yes, the entire quadruple system,
Speaker 3: all four stars, sits on a relatively flat inclination flat.
Speaker 3: If you were to draw line through their respective orbital planes,
Speaker 3: they mostly exist on the same two dimensional plane. It
Speaker 3: is like a cosmic dinner plate.
Speaker 2: And why is that a clue? Doesn't everything in space
Speaker 2: just sort of orbit in circles anyway?
Speaker 3: Not at all? Space is three dimensional. If you had
Speaker 3: a scenario where a binary star system was flying through
Speaker 3: space and just happened to gravitationally capture two other passing
Speaker 3: stars over millions of years, their orbits would be completely wild.
Speaker 3: Oh I see, They would be coming in at all
Speaker 3: sorts of random tilted angles, like a chaotic swarm of bees,
Speaker 3: or they wouldn't line up neatly exactly. The fact that
Speaker 3: they are flat is incredibly significant. In astrophysics, this kind
Speaker 3: of geometric alignment is considered primordial.
Speaker 2: Primordial, meaning it's a leftover artifact from the very beginning.
Speaker 3: Yes, the flatness is a residual physical fingerprint from the
Speaker 3: very process that formed the entire system from the ground up.
Speaker 3: It tells us definitively that this system did not form
Speaker 3: by random chance. Captures. All four of these stars were
Speaker 3: borne simultaneously from the exact same, originally flat disk of
Speaker 3: gas and dust.
Speaker 2: Okay, so take me back to the beginning. What does
Speaker 2: that birth actually look like? Are we talking about a
Speaker 2: stellar nursery, one of those giant glowing clouds you see
Speaker 2: in Hubble images exactly that.
Speaker 3: Imagine a massive, sprawling molecular cloud mostly hydrogen and helium
Speaker 3: gas mixed with cosmic dust, sitting in the deep frieze
Speaker 3: of interstellar space.
Speaker 2: Got it.
Speaker 3: Something triggers a collapse in a pocket of this cloud,
Speaker 3: maybe a shockwave from a distant supernova. As the gas
Speaker 3: begins to collapse inward under its own gravity, it starts to.
Speaker 2: Spin just naturally, starts spinning, Yes, and.
Speaker 3: As it spins faster conservation of angular momentum forces it
Speaker 3: to flatten out into a disk, much like a ball
Speaker 3: of pizza dough flattening out as a chef spins it
Speaker 3: in the air.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you have this giant spinning pizza dough made
Speaker 2: of hydrogen. How do you get four distinct stars out
Speaker 2: of it? Instead of just one giant superstar in the middle.
Speaker 3: The mechanism at play here involves a very specific complex
Speaker 3: physical process known as sequential fragmentation.
Speaker 2: Sequential fragmentation.
Speaker 3: As this massive disc spins, it begins to cool. When
Speaker 3: gas cools, it loses the thermal pressure that was fighting against gravity.
Speaker 3: Gravity starts to win, pulling clumps of material together within
Speaker 3: the disk.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it gets clumpy exactly.
Speaker 3: If the disc is massive enough, and if it cools
Speaker 3: rapidly enough, it becomes gravitationally unstable. Instead of all the
Speaker 3: material rushing smoothly into the center to form one giant star,
Speaker 3: the disc essentially breaks apart in stages. It fragments sequentially.
Speaker 2: So the pizza dough gets lumpy, and those lumps start
Speaker 2: pulling in more dough until they ignite.
Speaker 3: A very apt way to put it, the central densest
Speaker 3: part of the core might form the innermost binary past.
Speaker 4: That star AA and as Cartner right, but there is
Speaker 4: still a massive, heavy spinning disk of material left rotating
Speaker 4: around them, So that remaining disc fragments again, gathering enough
Speaker 4: mass to collapse and ignite.
Speaker 2: The third star, the Angry Hornet Yes.
Speaker 3: And then much further out in the cooler, less dense
Speaker 3: reaches of the disc, a final fragment collapses to form
Speaker 3: that fourth sun like star.
Speaker 2: That explains why they are all on the same flat plane,
Speaker 2: because the doughs already flat before it got lumpy.
Speaker 3: Exactly, the initial angular momentum of the primordial disc dictates
Speaker 3: the orbital planes of everything that forms.
Speaker 2: Out of it. That makes perfect sense.
Speaker 3: And what is also fascinating here is that the physics
Speaker 3: of sequential fragmentation naturally favors the creation of binary or
Speaker 3: multiple star components that have nearly equal mass. This perfectly
Speaker 3: explains why the inner three stars are all relatively massive
Speaker 3: and hot, similar in scale to one another compared to
Speaker 3: the outer star.
Speaker 2: But hold on, Beckup, that makes zero sense to me
Speaker 2: when we look at their current location. Why is that
Speaker 2: if they formed from different rings of a spinning disk
Speaker 2: the center, a middle ring, and an outer ring, they
Speaker 2: should be further apart. If the inner three stars currently
Speaker 2: fit inside Mercury's orbit, how do they get crammed in there?
Speaker 2: They couldn't have formed that close together initially, could they?
Speaker 2: There wouldn't have been enough raw gas in such a
Speaker 2: tiny spatial volume to build three massive stars.
Speaker 3: You have hit on the exact paradox that astronomers had
Speaker 3: to solve. You were entirely correct, Oh, I am, Yes,
Speaker 3: they could not have formed in their current incredibly compact configuration.
Speaker 3: The physical volume within Mercury's orbit simply cannot hold enough
Speaker 3: primordial gas to berth three stars of that mass. They
Speaker 3: had to have formed much further out in the disk
Speaker 3: and then moved inward. Moved inward, yes, And this is
Speaker 3: where a concept called disk driven migration comes into play.
Speaker 2: Disc driven migration. So they literally surfed the disc inward.
Speaker 2: How does the star migrate? It weighs millions of times
Speaker 2: more than the Earth. It doesn't casually drift.
Speaker 3: It requires immense forces, and those forces are supplied by
Speaker 3: the disc itself. Even after the stellar cores have fully
Speaker 3: formed and ignited, they aren't orbiting in a clean vacuum.
Speaker 2: Yet because there's still all that leftover gas.
Speaker 3: They are still embedded deep inside the remnants of that
Speaker 3: massive primordial disc of gas and dust. As the young
Speaker 3: massive stars move through this dense material, they experience friction.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, friction in space.
Speaker 3: Furthermore, their immense gravity creates wakes in the gas disc,
Speaker 3: much like a boat creating awake in water. The gravitational
Speaker 3: interaction between the mass of the stars and the dense
Speaker 3: spiral density waves they whip up in the surrounding disc
Speaker 3: actually leaches orbital energy away from the stars.
Speaker 2: It's like trying to run through waste deep water instead
Speaker 2: of running on a track. The drag slows you down,
Speaker 2: and in orbital mechanics, when you lose energy and slow down,
Speaker 2: you don't just stop in place, you lose altitude. You
Speaker 2: fall inward toward the center of gravity.
Speaker 3: Precisely, the conservation of orbital energy is unforgiving. As the
Speaker 3: disc strips momentum from the stars, the dynamics physically force
Speaker 3: these inner stars to migrate closer and closer to the center,
Speaker 3: shrinking their orbits over thousands and millions of years.
Speaker 2: That is terrifying and amazing.
Speaker 3: This continuous inward pull, driven by the friction and gravitational
Speaker 3: drag of the disk is what ultimately resulted in the
Speaker 3: incredibly compact, tightly wound inner subsystem we are looking at today.
Speaker 2: So they formed far apart the gas dragged them inward
Speaker 2: until they were practically touching, and then what Why didn't
Speaker 2: they just keep migrating until they crashed into each other
Speaker 2: and merged into a saddle star.
Speaker 3: Because eventually the disc runs out of material. As the
Speaker 3: stars burn hotter and brighter, they generate intense stellar winds
Speaker 3: and radiation pressure. This pressure begins to physically blow the
Speaker 3: remaining gas and dust out of the system.
Speaker 2: They clear their own neighborhood exactly.
Speaker 3: Additionally, whatever gas isn't blown away is actively accreted or
Speaker 3: eaten by the stars themselves. Once that primordial disc matterial
Speaker 3: was finally cleared away, the friction disappeared, the migrations stopped.
Speaker 3: The stars were effectively locked into their current incredibly tight configuration.
Speaker 2: The water drained from the pool, so the drag stopped,
Speaker 2: which naturally leads anyone listening to wonder about the safety
Speaker 2: of this setup. Right now, you just described an origin
Speaker 2: story that sounds like a near miss catastrophe.
Speaker 3: It does.
Speaker 2: You have three massive ultra hot stars crammed into a
Speaker 2: space smaller than Mercury's orbit, whipping around each other of
Speaker 2: a few days, with a fourth star acting as a
Speaker 2: giant gravitational boundary. Are they going to crash into each
Speaker 2: other tomorrow?
Speaker 3: The good news is no, not tomorrow, and not for
Speaker 3: a very long time. Despite the incredibly close quarters and
Speaker 3: the sheer kinetic energy involved, the current architecture of Tika
Speaker 3: one two zero three six two one three seven is
Speaker 3: remarkably stable.
Speaker 2: That is surprising.
Speaker 3: The researchers ran extensive n body gravitational simulations and determined
Speaker 3: that these orbits are expected to remain stable throughout the
Speaker 3: entire main sequence lifetime of these stars.
Speaker 2: I hear that term a lot in astronomy main sequence.
Speaker 2: What does that actually mean for a star? Is it
Speaker 2: like a star's prime working years?
Speaker 3: That is a perfect way to think about it. The
Speaker 3: main sequence is the prime of a star's life. It
Speaker 3: is the period during which a star is actively and
Speaker 3: consistently fusing hydrogen into helium.
Speaker 2: In its core okay fusion.
Speaker 3: This fusion process releases immense amounts of energy, creating an
Speaker 3: outward thermal pressure. This outward pressure perfectly balances the inward
Speaker 3: pull of the star's own massive gravity. This state of
Speaker 3: balance is called hydrostatic equilibrium.
Speaker 2: So as long as the engine is running and pushing outward,
Speaker 2: the star doesn't collapse.
Speaker 3: Correct For stars like the massive ones in the inner trio,
Speaker 3: this main sequence phase can last for millions or billions
Speaker 3: of years, depending on their exact mass.
Speaker 2: Do bigger stars live longer?
Speaker 3: Actually the opposite. Generally, the more massive a star, the
Speaker 3: faster it burns through its hydrogen fuel, resulting in a
Speaker 3: shorter life.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, fast and furious exactly.
Speaker 3: But as long as they remain in the stable hydrogen
Speaker 3: burning phase, their physical sizes and their gravitational interactions, while
Speaker 3: complex and frenetic, will maintain this delicate balance. The three
Speaker 3: plus one dance will continue uninterrupted, and.
Speaker 2: There is always a massive cosmic But when we were
Speaker 2: talking about stellar dynamics on a timeline of billions of years,
Speaker 2: this delicate dance absolutely cannot last forever, can it? Because
Speaker 2: the fuel eventually runs out?
Speaker 3: It does. When we look to the deep future of
Speaker 3: Tick one one two zero three six two one three seven,
Speaker 3: the simulations of its stellar dynamics show a very dramatic,
Speaker 3: inevitable conclusion.
Speaker 2: I knew it.
Speaker 3: Eventually, these stars will exhaust the hydrogen fuel in their cores.
Speaker 3: When that happens, the hydrostatic euculibrium is broken.
Speaker 2: Because the engine stops pushing out yes, the.
Speaker 3: Outward pressure drops and gravity temporarily wins, crushing the core inward.
Speaker 3: This crushing actually heats the core up so much that
Speaker 3: it triggers fusion in the outer layers of the star.
Speaker 2: And when a star starts burning its outer layers, it
Speaker 2: swells up. Yeah, it becomes a red giant.
Speaker 3: Exactly. The stars will expand massively involved, and this is
Speaker 3: where the extreme compactness of tik one two zero three
Speaker 3: six two one three seven becomes its doom.
Speaker 2: Oh no, because they are so close.
Speaker 3: Remember, they are currently sitting inside a boundary smaller than
Speaker 3: Mercury's orbit. If even one of those massive inner stars
Speaker 3: expands into a red giant, it will physically swell past
Speaker 3: its own gravitational boundary, a limit known as the rochlobe
Speaker 3: the rouchlobe.
Speaker 2: So it swells so big that its own gravity can't
Speaker 2: hold onto its outer layers anymore.
Speaker 3: Precisely, the outer layers of the swelling star will literally
Speaker 3: be pulled off by the intense gravity of its incredibly
Speaker 3: close neighbor.
Speaker 2: It just strips it there.
Speaker 3: This initiates a process called mass transfer. Star a starts
Speaker 3: dumping millions of tons of superheated plasma onto star B.
Speaker 3: This drastically alters the mass of both stars, which in
Speaker 3: turn drastically alters their gravitational pull, which destabilizes their previously
Speaker 3: perfect orbits.
Speaker 2: The intricate salsedance turns into a violent mosh pit.
Speaker 3: It becomes incredibly chaotic. The simulations indicate that the system
Speaker 3: will ultimately undergo a catastrophic collapse. The tightest pair in
Speaker 3: the center will likely interact first, transferring mass and altering
Speaker 3: their orbits, which will inevitably destabilize the third inner star.
Speaker 2: So there's no escaping it for them none.
Speaker 3: The inescapable destiny for the inner three stars is that
Speaker 3: they will merge, entirely merge. We are talking about an
Speaker 3: incomprehensibly violent cosmic pile up where three massive blazing stars collide,
Speaker 3: spiral into one another, and consume each other in a
Speaker 3: massive release of energy.
Speaker 2: That would be a sight to see a luminous red nova,
Speaker 2: just three sons ripping each other apart until there is
Speaker 2: only one left.
Speaker 3: It would be spectacular.
Speaker 2: And what happens after the dust settles from that apocalyptic merger?
Speaker 2: You get this one massive Frankenstein stars sitting in the middle,
Speaker 2: and the little sun like stars still dutifully orbiting on
Speaker 2: the outside. Does the Frankenstein Star just live happily ever after?
Speaker 2: It does not, of course not.
Speaker 3: The massive singular entity created by the collision will have
Speaker 3: a very turbulent short lifespan. It will eventually burn out
Speaker 3: the last of its usable nuclear fuel without fusion to
Speaker 3: prop it up. It will shed its outer layers into
Speaker 3: a beautiful planetary nebula, leaving behind only its dead, hyperdense.
Speaker 2: Core, so it shrinks down.
Speaker 3: Yes, the final result of this entire spectacular inner three
Speaker 3: star system will be a single white dwarf.
Speaker 2: A white dwarf could just a ground it for everyone.
Speaker 2: A white dwarf is essentially a star that has the
Speaker 2: mass of our Sun, but it has been crushed down
Speaker 2: by gravity until it is roughly the physical size of
Speaker 2: the Earth. It's just a glowing ember of incredibly dense.
Speaker 3: Matter, supported entirely by a quantum mechanical phenomenon called electron
Speaker 3: degeneracy pressure, where the electrons literally refuse to be squeezed
Speaker 3: any closer together.
Speaker 2: This is so dense it is dead.
Speaker 3: No fusion is happening. It is just slowly cooling in
Speaker 3: the dark one.
Speaker 2: What about the fourth star, the little sunl like soloist
Speaker 2: out on the edge.
Speaker 3: Eventually, billions of years later, that outer fourth star will
Speaker 3: run out of hydrogen, go through its own red giant phase,
Speaker 3: shed its layers, and also become a white dwarf.
Speaker 2: So the grand finale the end of the movie for
Speaker 2: top one two zero three six two one three seven. Yes,
Speaker 2: it goes from a massive, sprawling disc of primordial gas
Speaker 2: to a blazing, frantic quadruple star system packed into an
Speaker 2: impossible space down to two quiet, impossibly dense, cooling white
Speaker 2: dwarf cinders just orbiting each other in.
Speaker 3: The dark, a binary white dwark system. It is a
Speaker 3: profound and sobering life cycle, and this inevitable, dramatic fate
Speaker 3: is precisely why the continued monitoring of TAC one two
Speaker 3: zero three six two one three seven is so vital
Speaker 3: to the scientific community, because.
Speaker 2: We are essentially trying to build a timeline from a
Speaker 2: single photograph.
Speaker 3: Right That is the challenge of astronomy.
Speaker 2: Tracking the system and hopefully finding and monitoring any future
Speaker 2: quadruple systems out there is essential for astronomers. They're trying
Speaker 2: to crack the code of how these exotic rear systems evolve.
Speaker 2: Dynamically over billions of years. Exactly, we're currently just looking
Speaker 2: at one single microscopic snapshot and a cosmic movie that
Speaker 2: takes eons to play out.
Speaker 3: Yes, and by gathering high precision photometric and spectroscopic data
Speaker 3: on systems like this, we can feed real world numbers
Speaker 3: into our.
Speaker 2: Supercomputers to predict the future.
Speaker 3: To predict the future and understand the past, we can
Speaker 3: refine our n body simulations and better understand the hidden
Speaker 3: gravitational rules that govern the universe. It allows us to
Speaker 3: test our theories of sequential fragmentation, disk driven migration, and
Speaker 3: stellar evolution in extreme boundary pushing environments.
Speaker 2: It really is a staggering reality to visualize four massive
Speaker 2: stars occupying the same physical space as our peaceful inner
Speaker 2: Solar system. We have this quiet little neighborhood with our
Speaker 2: one son, and somewhere out there four stars are locked
Speaker 2: in a gravitational cage match that is destined to end
Speaker 2: in a massive merger, leaving behind only glowing embers.
Speaker 3: It is a lot to take in.
Speaker 2: It makes you look at the night sky completely differently
Speaker 2: it should.
Speaker 3: It leaves you with a thought worth mulling over long
Speaker 3: after you hear this is that if a system this
Speaker 3: intensely complex is tightly packed in this chaotic can somehow
Speaker 3: maintain a stable, intricate gravitational dance for billions of years
Speaker 3: before it's inevitable collapse. What does that say about the
Speaker 3: unseen delicate balances keeping our own seemingly empty solar system
Speaker 3: in check.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a good point.
Speaker 3: Our local neighborhood feels incredibly calm, but it is governed
Speaker 3: by the exact same, unforgiving chaotic forces of orbital mechanics.
Speaker 2: It makes you wonder what other fortuitous and chaotic cosmic
Speaker 2: dances are hiding just behind a single point of light
Speaker 2: in your night sky, just waiting for us to decipher
Speaker 2: their rhythms. The gay Seas