FRANCE: Scientists have discovered the first massive binary star, epsilon Lupi, in which both stars have magnetic fields.
A binary star is a star system consisting of two or more stars, orbiting around their common centre of mass.
For the past few years, the BinaMIcS (Binarity and Magnetic Interactions in various classes of Stars) collaboration, formed to study the magnetic properties of close binaries, has been trying to find such an object.
They have now discovered one using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.
“The origin of magnetism amongst massive stars is something of a mystery and this discovery may help to shed some light on the question of why these stars have magnetic fields,” said Matt Shultz, a PhD candidate at the Queen’s University in Canada.
In cool stars, such as the Sun, magnetic fields are generated by a convection in the outer portion of the star.
However, there is no convection in the outer layers of massive star, so there is no support for a magnetic dynamo.
Nevertheless, approximately 10 per cent of massive stars have strong magnetic fields.
Two explanations have been proposed for the origin of massive star magnetic fields, both variants on the idea of a so-called “fossil” magnetic field, which is generated at some point in the star’s past and then locked in to the star’s outer portion.
The first hypothesis is that the magnetic field is generated while the star is being formed; the second is that the magnetic field originates in dynamos driven by the violent mixing of stellar plasma when the two stars in a close binary merge.
