<ul><li>Astronomers have discovered that Wolf-Rayet 104 is made up of two massive stars orbiting each other every 8 months.</li><li>The stars' powerful stellar winds collide, creating a spiral of dust that glows in infrared light and spins like a cosmic pinwheel.</li><li>The system was previously thought to be potentially aiming a deadly gamma-ray burst (GRB) towards Earth, but new research reveals that the dust spiral is tilted differently from the stars' orbit, reducing the chance of a GRB hitting Earth.</li><li>While the discovery is reassuring, it also raises new questions about the unknown forces and processes shaping the dust spiral.</li></ul>

Wolf-Rayet 104: The “pinwheel star” isn’t a death star after all

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