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"A weird type of 'hybrid' star has been discovered nearly 40 years since it was first theorized \u2014 but until now has been curiously difficult to find.\nIn 1975, renowned astrophysicists Kip Thorne, of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, Calif., and Anna \u017Bytkow, of the University of Cambridge, UK, assembled a theory on how a large dying star could swallow its neutron star binary partner, thus becoming a very rare type of stellar hybrid, nicknamed a Thorne-\u017Bytkow object (or T\u017BO). The neutron star \u2014 a dense husk of degenerate matter that was once a massive star long since gone supernova \u2014 would spiral into the red supergiant\u2019s core, interrupting normal fusion processes.\nSEE ALSO: Has the Weirdest Star in the Universe Been Found?\nAccording to the Thorne-\u017Bytkow theory, after the two objects have merged, an excess of the elements rubidium, lithium and molybdenum will be generated by the hybrid. So astronomers have been on the lookout for stars in our galaxy, which is thought to contain only a few dozen of these objects at any one time, with this specific chemical signature in their atmospheres.\nNow, according to Emily Levesque of the University of Colorado Boulder and her team, a bona fide T\u017BO has been discovered and their findings have been accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters.\u201CStudying these objects is exciting because it represents a completely new model of how stellar interiors can work,\u201D said Levesque. \u201CIn these interiors we also have a new way of producing heavy elements in our universe. You\u2019ve heard that everything is made of \u2018star stuff\u2019\u2014inside these stars we might now have a new way to make some of it.\u201D\nSEE ALSO: The Most Mind-Blowing Space Spirals\nIn January, Discovery News reported on Levesque\u2019s work and the identification of several Thorne-\u017Bytkow object candidates. Now, the team of astronomers have narrowed the selection down to a single red supergiant star in the Small Magellanic Cloud (called HV 2112) that has very similar chemical abundances and temperature to the Thorne-\u017Bytkow model. The astronomers used the 6.5-meter Magellan Clay telescope on Las Campanas, in Chile, to record the starlight spectrum from HV 2112.\n\u201CI am extremely happy that observational confirmation of our theoretical prediction has started to emerge,\u201D said \u017Bytkow, who is also a co-investigator on this study. \u201CSince Kip Thorne and I proposed our models of stars with neutron cores, people were not able to disprove our work. If theory is sound, experimental confirmation shows up sooner or later. So it was a matter of identification of a promising group of stars, getting telescope time and proceeding with the project.\u201D\nSEE ALSO: Violent Galactic Clash May Solve Cosmic Mystery\nThere are some subtle differences between the observational results and theory, but, as Levesque\u2019s team points out, stellar theory has advanced in the decades since Thorne and \u017Bytkow\u2019s original work. \u201CWe could, of course, be wrong. There are some minor inconsistencies between some of the details of what we found and what theory predicts,\u201D said co-investigator Philip Massey, of Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz. \u201CBut the theoretical predictions are quite old, and there have been a lot of improvements in the theory since then. Hopefully our discovery will spur additional work on the theoretical side now.\u201D"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2014/06/05/hybrid-star-discovery/>