WASHINGTON—Unlike the lonely sun, about half the stars in our Milky Way galaxy are in a long-term committed relationship with another star, orbiting each another in a celestial marriage called a binary system.
Researchers this week described one of these marriages gone wrong—a twosome that borders on the extreme, with the pair whirling around each other every 51 minutes in the fastest such orbital period known for a rare class of binary stars. As part of the drama, one star is eating its companion.
