Insights from Binary Stars in the Milky Way

"As Chris Hamilton (Institute for Advanced Study) explains in a recent research article, understanding the current orbits of binary stars in the Milky Way requires separating the effects of nature (the eccentricities that the binary systems are born with) and nurture (the outside gravitational effects of passing stars and the background galactic pull).

Hamilton approached this problem by modeling the effects of the Milky Way’s overall gravitational pull on populations of synthetic binary stars in the outer regions of the galaxy. "

Read more at AAS Nova.