The findings are “of spectacular importance,” said Penn State physicist Abhay Ashtekar, who wasn’t part of the research.Before August, the only other gravity waves detected by LIGO were generated by colliding black holes. A light-year is 5.”It started in a galaxy called NGC 4993, seen from Earth in the Hydra constellation.A rendering of a neutron star merger.What they witnessed in mid-August and revealed Monday was the long-ago collision of two neutron stars — a phenomenon California Institute of Technology’s David H.”The colliding stars spewed bright blue, super-hot debris that was dense and unstable. A month later the whole area where the crash happened would have been blocked from astronomers’ prying eyes by the sun.7 seconds of each other, by NASA’s Fermi China Needle Punched Fabric suppliers telescope, which detects gamma rays, and gravity wave detectors in Louisiana and Washington State that are a part of the LIGO Laboratory, whose founders won a Nobel Prize earlier this month.
“This is our fantasy observation. Astronomers around the world reacted to the signal quickly, focusing telescopes located on every continent and even in orbit to a distant spot in the sky. Some of it coalesced into heavy elements, like gold, platinum and uranium. Two neutron stars collapsed cores of stars so dense that a teaspoon of their matter would weigh 1 billion tons, danced ever faster and closer together until they collided, said Carnegie Institution astronomer Maria Drout. The Hubble Space Telescope even got a snapshot of the afterglow.Measurements of the light and other energy emanating from the crash have helped scientists explain how planet-killing gamma-ray bursts are born, how fast the universe is expanding, and where heavy elements like platinum and gold come from.Thousands of astronomers found the aftermath of the merger in the sky.
Scientists involved in the search for gravitational waves said this was the event they had prepared for over more than 20 years.“This is really brand new. “But we’re going to keep trying. Reitze called “the most spectacular fireworks in the universe. And after three weeks it was completely gone, she said. When these things collide, all hell breaks loose,” he said. Scientists had suspected neutron star collisions had enough power to create heavier elements but weren’t certain until they witnessed it.“This is getting everything you wish for,” said Syracuse University physics Professor Duncan Brown, one of more than 4,000 scientists involved in the blitz of science that the crash kicked off. After a day or two that blue faded, become much fainter and redder.“The completeness of this picture from the beginning to the end is unprecedented,” said Columbia University physics Professor Szabolcs Marka.
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