Usually the brightness of distant stars for observers from Earth varies by a fraction of a per cent, but MACHO 80.7443.1718 has a 20 per cent change in brightness, which is 200 times greater than average. Modelling has shown that this is a double system, in the centre of which is a massive star 35 times heavier than the Sun and 24 times wider than it. A smaller star spins around it at a tremendous speed, making one revolution in about 33 days.
The gravitational pull of the smaller star pulls the material of the larger star in the form of monstrous ridges or waves, which can be up to 4.3 million kilometres high. That is, three of our suns could fit inside one such stellar wave. Then all this mass collapses back onto the home star, generating colossal energy releases.
