You could think of it as the real dancing with the stars. Two white dwarf stars have been found twirling around each other to make a complete orbit in less than every 13 minutes. And they provide a chance to test ideas about generalrelativity and gravitational waves. The system is described in a paper accepted by the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
最近，科学家发现了两颗白矮星，以小于13分钟的周期的彼此绕转。观测这两颗恒星，可以为验证广义相对论和重力波理论提供数据。这个双星系统发表在近期的《天体物理学杂志快报》上。

One of the stars is about the size of Earth, but has more than half the mass of the Sun. A penny as dense as the star would weigh half a ton here. The other star is about 60 times our size and has about half the mass of its companion.
双星系统中的一颗只有地球大小，但其质量超过太阳质量的一半，如果用这颗星球的物质铸造一枚硬币，它（在地球上的）重量是五百公斤。另外一颗的体积是地球的60倍，质量是较小星球的一半左右。

Astronomers estimate that the partners will collide in about 900,000 years. At that time, they could form a stable binary star, or merge into a single, rapidly spinning white dwarf, or go supernova. In the meantime, they provide a place to look for gravitational waves. Because they’re not exchanging mass now, gravitational waves should account for the loss of energy that brings them closer every year. Which for each of them around the other is just a few podcasts long.
天文学家估计，这对白矮星可能会以这样的方式继续绕转90万年。之后的结局有几种：一个是它们形成一个稳定的双星系统；二是撞在一起，融合形成一颗快速自转的白矮星；三是相撞发生超新星爆发。而在这之前，可以通过它们来观测重力波的存在。因为目前两颗白矮星之间没有物质交换，只有用重力波可以解释为什么有能量损耗，导致它们逐年靠近几个波长。