Publication Date:
2012-07-28
Description:
The presence of a nearby companion alters the evolution of massive stars in binary systems, leading to phenomena such as stellar mergers, x-ray binaries, and gamma-ray bursts. Unambiguous constraints on the fraction of massive stars affected by binary interaction were lacking. We simultaneously measured all relevant binary characteristics in a sample of Galactic massive O stars and quantified the frequency and nature of binary interactions. More than 70% of all massive stars will exchange mass with a companion, leading to a binary merger in one-third of the cases. These numbers greatly exceed previous estimates and imply that binary interaction dominates the evolution of massive stars, with implications for populations of massive stars and their supernovae.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Sana, H -- de Mink, S E -- de Koter, A -- Langer, N -- Evans, C J -- Gieles, M -- Gosset, E -- Izzard, R G -- Le Bouquin, J-B -- Schneider, F R N -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2012 Jul 27;337(6093):444-6. doi: 10.1126/science.1223344.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Astronomical Institute Anton Pannekoek, Amsterdam University, Science Park 904, 1098 XH, Amsterdam, Netherlands. h.sana@uva.nl〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22837522" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
