THE FAST SPIRAL-IN OF THE COMPANION STAR TO THE BLACK HOLE XTE J1118+480
THE FAST SPIRAL-IN OF THE COMPANION STAR TO THE BLACK HOLE XTE J1118+480
We report the detection of an orbital period decay of ms yr−1 in the black hole X-ray binary XTE J1118+480. This corresponds to a period change of −0.85 ± 0.30 μs per orbital cycle, which is ∼150 times larger than expected from the emission of gravitational waves. These observations cannot …