Scientists have discovered a star system that could soon explode in the strongest gamma-ray burst, according to the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
The system reportedly consists of three stars surrounded by a swirl of cosmic dust. Its official name is 2XMM J160050.7-514245, however, due to the sinuous shapes that resemble a snake coiled around the stars, astronomers gave it another name - "Apop". In ancient Egyptian mythology, Apopis is a huge serpent personifying chaos, the eternal enemy of the sun god Ra. Soon "Apop" may explode in the most powerful electromagnetic event in the Universe - a gamma-ray burst.
The system consists of Wolf-Rayet stars, which are characterized by very high temperature and luminosity. Some luminaries, the largest, turn into Wolf-Rayet stars at the end of their existence. Basically, this is a short phase lasting several hundred thousand years.
"Apopa" is distinguished by an amazing speed of stellar winds of 12 million kilometers per hour. These winds have created a vortex that surrounds the star system. Unlike winds, the vortex moves at a slow pace (less than two million kilometers per hour). This speed gap is believed to be the result of one of the stars in the system emitting fast and slow winds simultaneously in different directions.
Based on this assumption, astronomers have come to the conclusion that this star is in a state close to critical - it rotates so fast that it practically tears itself apart. It is believed that such rapid rotation of the Wolf-Rayet star results in a prolonged gamma-ray burst when its center explodes at the end of its life cycle.