An electrically powered binary star?

We propose a model for stellar binary systems consisting of a magnetic and a non-magnetic white-dwarf pair which is powered principally by electrical energy. In our model the luminosity is caused by resistive heating of the stellar atmospheres due to induced currents driven within the binary. This process is reminiscent of the Jupiter-Io system, but greatly increased in power because of the larger companion and stronger magnetic field of the primary. Electrical power is an alternative stellar luminosity source, following on from nuclear fusion and accretion. We find that this source of heating is sufficient to account for the observed X-ray luminosity of the 9.5-min binary RX J1914+24, and provides an explanation for its puzzling characteristics.Comment: accepted by MNRA

Astrometric Microlensing with the GAIA satellite

GAIA is the ``super-Hipparcos'' survey satellite selected as a Cornerstone 6 mission by the European Space Agency. GAIA can measure microlensing by the small excursions of the light centroid that occur during events. The all-sky source-averaged astrometric microlensing optical depth is about 10^{-5}. Some 25000 sources will have a significant variation of the centroid shift, together with a closest approach, during the lifetime of the mission. A covariance analysis is used to study the propagation of errors and the estimation of parameters from realistic sampling of the GAIA datastream of transits in the along-scan direction during microlensing events. Monte Carlo simulations are used to study the 2500 events for which the mass can be recovered with an error of less than 50 per cent. These high quality events are dominated by disk lenses within a few tens of parsecs and source stars within a few hundred parsecs. We show that the local mass function can be recovered from the high quality sample to good accuracy. GAIA is the first instrument with the capabilities of measuring the mass locally in very faint objects like black holes and very cool white and brown dwarfs. For only 5 per cent of all astrometric events will GAIA record even one photometric datapoint. There is a need for a dedicated telescope that densely samples the Galactic Centre and spiral arms, as this can improve the accuracy of parameter estimation by a factor of about 10.Comment: 18 pages, 18 figures, MNRAS, in pres