Colliding neutron stars shot a light-speed jet through space

Science News ^ | 2/22/19 | Lisa Grossman

[LibWhacker]

An emerging consensus suggests the crash can explain distant gamma-ray bursts

GREAT ESCAPE A bright jet of fast-moving particles fled the scene after two neutron stars collided, spewing material and potentially forming a black hole (shown in this artist’s illustration).

When a pair of ultradense cores of dead stars smashed into one another, the collision shot a bright jet of charged subatomic particles through space.

Astronomers thought no such jet had made it out of the wreckage of the neutron star crash, first detected in August 2017. But new observations of the crash site using a network of radio telescopes from around the world show that a high-speed stream of particles did escape from the debris, researchers report online February 21 in Science.

The work is part of an emerging consensus among scientists that the merger actually produced a jet, and could shed light on the origins of mysterious flashes of high-energy light called short gamma-ray bursts.

According to theory, a pair of crashing neutron stars should merge into another dense object, possibly a black hole. In the process, a combination of extreme energies and magnetic fields could launch a bright jet of electrons and protons moving close to the speed of light. Researchers think that such jets are seen from afar as short gamma-ray bursts, or GRBs. But no one has ever directly observed a neutron star collision producing the bursts.

The 2017 neutron star crash — the first time scientists had directly observed such a merger — provided the first chance to test the idea, says study coauthor and astrophysicist Giancarlo Ghirlanda of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Merate, Italy. That merger was picked up when the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, and its sister experiment, Advanced Virgo, detected ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves...

[Moonman62]

LIGO is such an impressive accomplishment.

The Wiki page on the gravitational wave detection that this article is about:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GW170817

[Moonman62]

An estimate of the gold and platinum created by the merger:

The neutron star merger event is thought to result in a kilonova, characterized by a short gamma ray burst followed by a longer optical “afterglow” powered by the radioactive decay of heavy r-process nuclei. Kilonovae are candidates for the production of half the chemical elements heavier than iron in the Universe. A total of 16,000 times the mass of the Earth in heavy elements is believed to have formed, including approximately ten Earth masses just of the two elements gold and platinum.

[moovova]

I can’t decide if this article is about a felony hit-and-run, or a high-stakes corporate merger.

[relee]

...When a pair of ultradense

AOC and K Harris?

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Need to see the video...or it didn’t happen. </sarcasm>

[GraceG]

An estimate of the gold and platinum created by the merger:

The neutron star merger event is thought to result in a kilonova, characterized by a short gamma ray burst followed by a longer optical “afterglow” powered by the radioactive decay of heavy r-process nuclei. Kilonovae are candidates for the production of half the chemical elements heavier than iron in the Universe. A total of 16,000 times the mass of the Earth in heavy elements is believed to have formed, including approximately ten Earth masses just of the two elements gold and platinum.

Gold is Good, P-Latinum is forever!

[beethovenfan]

Or were they colluding?

[doorgunner69]

Do not want to be down-range of that stuff.........

[aimhigh]

I wonder if they couldn’t detect at first because the stuff was travelling faster than the speed of light.

[fieldmarshaldj]

*ping*

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks fieldmarshaldj.

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[ETL]

LIGO is such an impressive accomplishment. The Wiki page on the gravitational wave detection that this article is about

The amount of the relativistic "shortening" of the apparatus was reportedly less than the width of a proton! In other words, if the arm of the apparatus was originally as long as the distance from earth to the nearest star, outside the sun, the shortening would be about the width of a human hair. It is supposedly of that same ratio.

The distance to the nearest star outside the sun is 4.3 light years! That's roughly 25 TRILLION MILES, vs the width of a human hair!! Frankly, I don't believe it.

[Redcitizen]

"Need to see the video...or it didn’t happen."

video as requested...