AR Scorpii is Unusual Binary.

[Tiny]

What amazing discovery of the complications of our Universe.
Enjoy.

About 380 light years away in the constellation Scorpius lies a star that has puzzled astronomers for more than 40 years. Called AR Scorpii, the star flashes brightly and fades again every couple of minutes, like a lightbulb on a dimmer switch. Now, astronomers have identified the cause of the flickering, and it's a reminder that the cosmos is still rife with terrifying secrets.

AR Scorpii, previously identified as a single, , is actually two, a compact white dwarf the size of the Earth but 200,000 times more massive, and a cool red dwarf a third the size of the sun.

By examining the system with the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope and others, astronomers have now learnt that the white dwarf is spinning incredibly fast, charging up electrons to almost the speed of light.
As the white dwarf twirls about, these energised particles whip through space, lashing the cooler companion and releasing a powerful pulse of electromagnetic radiation every 1.97 minutes.
This brutal star-on-star bondage, , has not only never been seen before; it's never been imagined before.
Pulsing has been observed in neutron stars, extremely dense objects formed by the gravitational collapse of a stellar remnant after a supernova. But while some theories have predicted that white dwarfs could act in a similar manner, the details of this system's behaviour - including the source of the electrons that charge up the cosmic floggings - remain an enigma.

Read more at:

A radio pulsing white dwarf binary star

White dwarfs are compact stars, similar in size to Earth but 200,000 times more massive1.
Isolated white dwarfs emit most of their power from ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelengths,
but when in close orbits with less dense stars, white dwarfs can strip material from their companions,
and the resulting mass transfer can generate atomic line2 and X-ray3 emission, as
well as near- and mid-infrared radiation if the white dwarf is magnetic4. However, even in binaries,
white dwarfs are rarely detected at far-infrared or radio frequencies. Here we report
the discovery of a white dwarf / cool star binary that emits from X-ray to radio wavelengths.
The star, AR Scorpii (henceforth AR Sco), was classified in the early 1970s as a -Scuti star5,
a common variety of periodic variable star. Our observations reveal instead a 3:56 hr period
close binary, pulsing in brightness on a period of 1:97 min. The pulses are so intense that
AR Sco’s optical flux can increase by a factor of four within 30 s, and they are detectable
at radio frequencies, the first such detection for any white dwarf system. They reflect the
spin of a magnetic white dwarf which we find to be slowing down on a 107 yr timescale. The
spin-down power is an order of magnitude larger than that seen in electromagnetic radiation,
which, together with an absence of obvious signs of accretion, suggests that AR Sco is
primarily spin-powered. Although the pulsations are driven by the white dwarf’s spin, they
originate in large part from the cool star. AR Sco’s broad-band spectrum is characteristic
of synchrotron radiation, requiring relativistic electrons. These must either originate from
near the white dwarf or be generated in situ at theMstar through direct interaction with the
white dwarf’s magnetosphere.

Read more at:

[trash]

I can imagine some pretty weird shit in the universe, but this one is a little bit of a surprise.
Personally, I'm waiting for them to discover a pulsar in an elliptical orbit around a black hole, preferably as very large black hole.