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Fnord666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

It seems like you can't go a day without hearing news of a merger. Not corporate mergers—those are boring. Mergers between astronomical bodies are where it's at these days. And it's not just black holes and neutron stars doing the merging. I honestly had no idea, but it seems that it is not so unusual for stars to be the product of a merger.

Of course, it's also possible that a collision between two stars would lead to a massive explosion. And, so far at least, it's been hard to answer the question of what happens when two stars collide: do they explode or go out with a whimper? The observation of a large white dwarf that seems to have been the product [doi.org] of two titchy white dwarfs may support the whimper side.

[...] Models indicate that the creation of a neutron star from a large white dwarf might take a few thousand years. That means, in astronomical terms, the J005311 merger basically happened yesterday, and we are still awaiting the fallout. You can bet that "awaiting" will involve a multi-instrument observation campaign.

Personally, I am still coming to grips with the idea that 10 percent of massive main sequence stars and 10 percent of white dwarfs are the product of mergers. How did I not know this before now?

Source:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/05/two-white-dwarfs-collide-may-end-up-as-neutron-star/ [arstechnica.com]

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