Astronomers discover merging star systems that might explode

Sometimes when you're looking for one thing, you find something completely different and unexpected. In the scientific endeavour, such serendipity can lead to new discoveries. Today, researchers who found the first hypervelocity stars escaping the Milky Way announced that their search also turned up a dozen double-star systems. Half of those are merging and might explode as supernovae in the astronomically near future...

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