--- title: Hybrid Star: Meet the Cosmic Tootsie Pop description: The cosmos never stop serving up surprises. The latest is a red giant star with a chewy chocolate center — well, sort of canonical: https://time.com/2852077/star-hybrid-tootsie-pop/ author: Michael Lemonick article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-06-10T20:47:36.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:01:15.204Z article:section: Science og:title: A Giant Star With a Chewy Chocolate Center—Sort Of og:description: The cosmos never stop serving up surprises. The latest is a red giant star with a chewy chocolate center — well, sort of og:url: https://time.com/2852077/star-hybrid-tootsie-pop/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt48de9d32ed2099b3/698696fa3617602f0390c8b4/red-giant.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4110 og:image:height: 2312 og:image:alt: There's a prize hidden inside this red giant og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: A Giant Star With a Chewy Chocolate Center—Sort Of twitter:description: The cosmos never stop serving up surprises. The latest is a red giant star with a chewy chocolate center — well, sort of twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt48de9d32ed2099b3/698696fa3617602f0390c8b4/red-giant.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Meet the Cosmic Tootsie Pop > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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Future Proof is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/newsletters?i=fbd01e4e-2573-411c-9c1c-f6618335f45e&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Neil deGrasse Tyson Looks Back at 'Cosmos' [Watch (HLS stream): Neil deGrasse Tyson Looks Back at 'Cosmos'](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/VSiGzSHL.m3u8) (3:21)  _Published 2014-06-10. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson reflects on hosting the popular science show 'Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey'_ by [Michael Lemonick](https://time.com/author/michael-d-lemonick/) ## Michael Lemonick Jun 10, 2014 8:47 PM UTC  There's a prize hidden inside this red giant There's a prize hidden inside this red giant Getty Images by [Michael Lemonick](https://time.com/author/michael-d-lemonick/) ## Michael Lemonick Jun 10, 2014 8:47 PM UTC Astronomers have found some pretty strange objects lurking deep in the universe — voracious black holes more massive than a billion suns, lonely planets wandering among the stars, galaxies made almost entirely of dark matter, and more. But what Emily Levesque found just beyond the edge of the Milky Way is arguably the strangest thing yet. “It’s bizarre,” says the University of Colorado, Boulder scientist. “It’s completely nuts.” The nutty thing Levesque and three colleagues discovered looks like an ordinary red giant star, similar in appearance to Betelgeuse, which marks one of Orion’s shoulders. But nestled deep inside, like the yolk of an egg or the chocolate center of a hard-candy [Tootsie Pop](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tootsie%5FPops), is a neutron star — the super-dense remnant left behind when a star explodes. It is, she says, “unlike any star that we’ve ever seen.” Perhaps the craziest part of all is that theorists have been thinking about these weird objects for decades. It’s not all that unusual for two giant stars to be locked in a relatively tight orbit around each other. If one of the stars explodes as a supernova — also not that unusual — you can end up with an ordinary star paired with a neutron star. And if the orbit is tight enough, the neutron star can spiral in and be swallowed, intact, by the giant star, sinking to the core and setting up residence. The resulting chimera would look like an ordinary giant star with no obvious sign of its hybrid nature. So back in the ’70s, Anna Żytkow, now at the University of Cambridge, working with Caltech astrophysicist Kip Thorne, began to think about how you’d identify these things, which have been known ever since as Thorne-Żytkow objects, or TŻOs. They realized that the neutron star’s surface, which would ordinarily be exposed to empty space, would now be in constant contact with the dense, gaseous substance of the enclosing star. “There would be an intensely hot thermonuclear burning region,” says Żytkow, who co-authored a paper being submitted to _Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society_ announcing the new discovery. Under those extreme conditions, the hybrid star would forge excess amounts of the elements rubidium, lithium and molybdenum. And if you studied the star with a sufficiently sensitive telescope, you could detect that excess. “Observers have looked in the past, but they were perhaps not looking at the best candidates,” says Żytkow. “The stars must be very red and very cool but very luminous.” That’s just the sort of stars Levesque had been studying and writing about, though without the equipment to look for the signatures of the telltale elements — and Żytkow had been following her work. “We got an email one day from Anna saying, ‘I think some of the stars you’re finding might be TZOs,'” Levesque says. “I’d heard them mentioned in passing once or twice, but knew very little about them. We all read up on them a lot more.” They then began training the powerful Magellan Clay telescope, in Chile, on the candidate stars, looking for the right chemical spectra. When they focused specifically on one called HV2112, located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, which orbits the Milky Way, they hit paydirt. “You can tell at a glance that it’s unusual,” says Levesque. When team member Nidia Morell, of the Carnegie Observatories, saw the star’s spectrum, Levesque recalls, “she said, ‘I don’t know what this is, but I know I like it!'” As for what lies in HV2112’s future, nobody can really say at this point. The neutron star’s surface gravity is enormous, and while energy from the thermonuclear reactions keep the surrounding star from collapsing, some of its gas must be falling in. At some point, says Żytkow, the neutron star itself will swell to a critical mass, and then…well, that’s uncertain. “The whole thing could explode,” she says. “Or the neutron star could collapse to form a black hole. At this point, it’s difficult to say.” Either way, the bizarre life story of this weird celestial object is far from over — and the ending is likely to be violent. Maybe a Tootsie Pop isn’t the best analogy for this new kind of star after all. It’s really more like the malevolent creature that bursts out of an astronaut’s body in what was easily the [grossest scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRX2ntm2rXQ) from the original _Alien_ movie — though not, mercifully, with quite so much gore. ## Transcript When we were asked often, who's your target audience, it was like everybody. What, am I not allowed to reach everybody? And, Drew even said anyone with a beating heart, and I wanted to add, well do zombies have a beating heart, I want to reach them too. Cosmos in 13 episodes covered a lot of the universe. And consistent with the original, Cosmos is a statement. Not only of what we know of the universe, but also what we know of our place within the universe. That's what enables people to take it to heart. That's why it sits differently in you. Science has been ascending. I'd go so far as to say, it's been trending. And how do you trend? You trend not because there's one vocal supporter of something. You trend. When you become embraced by popular culture. And so, this gives me great expectation that science can be something that is not debated by politicians. But is respected by politicians so that they can shape the next thing they debate. Informed by that scientific discovery. That's the world we should be living in. And that's the, not the world we're in now. So I see maybe there's a time delay there, but I see it happening. Gives me great pleasure to know that I participated in some small way in making that sea change. [ MUSIC ] If all you do is present scientifically determined truths, if you want to say it's controversial in your own circles, go ahead. But it's not controversial to any of us [ LAUGH ]. So, so, people say, oh you're tackling controver, no, we're tackling science. It's what experiment and observation has revealed about the natural world. I have a deep sense of relief [ LAUGH ] that the very last episode has aired. All of the effort required to make the 13 episodes. And then, the anticipation each week of an episode airing. And all the tweeting that was around it and the media. Maybe I'm delusional, but I'm thinking that my life can return to normal after this [ LAUGH ]. Except now that, now five times as many people are recognizing me on the street. So that's less normal. But I can duck into a car and then go back home. Then I can be dad and husband again. We didn't touch the inner mind, the human mind, consciousness, intelligence. We didn't really address that. We didn't address what aliens might be like. And, by the way, these are only topics we would address if it somehow gave us insight back to ourselves. Otherwise, it's kind of a one off and it would just be a fun excursion, but it wouldn't be Cosmonian. 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