A black widow star can unlock the secrets of our Sun

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Our universe is filled with unsolved mysteries and this particular black widow star system has emerged as one of the biggest mysteries to solve. A dead star is sending pulsars (radio signals from a star that cannot be seen) to Earth. These pulsars are being sent every 4 milliseconds. But the pulsars do not mean any harm to our planet. On the contrary, they can reveal secrets about the space-time continuum and unanswered questions about our own star. What is a black widow star system? And how exactly can a pulsar be so crucial to us? Read on to find out.

The information comes from a new study published in the pre-print database arXiv, where researchers have not only found this black widow star system but claim that this star system in particular is the key to understanding the universe. While the claims are big, they are not without any merit. According to the researchers, this black widow star system is not only predictable to a great extent but its pulsar frequency is also very low, making it an extremely rare phenomenon.

Black widow star systems are unique in our universe. It is a binary star system where one star is dead and has turned into a red giant or a white dwarf. Its companion is an active but smaller (one-tenth of the dead star's size or less) star which revolves around it. Due to the high magnetic field of the dead star, it slowly consumes matter from the active star till the smaller star completely dies. This behavior is the reason why it has been named black widow after a species of a spider where the larger female consumes the male.

When the dead star continuously pulls in matter from the living star, the resultant reaction is a release of energy. On Earth, we receive these energies from far away stars as