Collision in Space Between Stars Creates Huge Amount of Gold and More

(ANTIMEDIA) — Imagine a collapsed star core the size of a city but with the mass of our sun. One teaspoon weighs as much as a mountain. Now imagine two of them hurtling toward each other at a third of the speed of light. When they collide, a rare cosmic phenomenon, the ensuing explosion generates a radioactive field of debris the size of our solar system, filled with an almost incomprehensible amount of heavy elements, including blazing hot pure gold and platinum.

A collision of two ultra-dense neutron stars also casts off gravitational waves, which Einstein predicted. Until earlier this year, however, this process had never been directly detected. In fact, scientists had never witnessed a neutron star explosion, something that LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) astronomers at CalTech spent decades preparing for even while admitting that their chances of observing one were 80,000 to one. Then, in August of 2017, scientists working at over 70 ground- and space-based observatories on all continents confirmed gravitational waves and short gamma-ray bursts emanating from a binary neutron star collision 130 million light-years away. Scientists say such explosions may have created most of the gold in the universe.

Image credits: Left, Hubble/STScI; Right, 1M2H Team/UC Santa Cruz & Carnegie Observatories/Ryan Foley

It was the first time gravitational waves and light had been observed as a result of the same event. News of the discovery spread rapidly across the scientific community, as many physicists and astronomers had expected to never see evidence of neutron star collision.

“We witnessed history unfolding in front of our eyes: two neutron stars drawing closer, closer… turning faster and faster around each other, then colliding and scattering debris all over the place,” said co-discoverer Benoit Mours of France’s CNRS research institute.

Bangalore Sathyaprakash from Cardiff University’s School of Physics and Astronomy called it the most exciting event of his scientific life.

“This event marks a turning point in observational astronomy and will lead to a treasure trove of scientific results.”

The discovery marks the first time gravitational waves have been detected via the entire electromagnetic spectrum. In four previous instances, Nobel Physics Prize-winning scientists observed these waves from the violent mergers of black holes, which emit no light.

Data from neutron star explosions could allow us to track the rate of the expanding universe, as well as pin an exact date to the cosmos.

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Two Stars Crashed Into Each Other Flinging Out Gold, And Wobbling The Universe

The amazing new discovery of two crashing stars is a giant leap forward for astrophysics. This celestial event has been described by many as one of the most exciting things to happen in space.

According to The Independent, the super-dense neuron stars crashed together 130 million light-years away, spewing out precious metals and other heavy elements like platinum and uranium. Neutron stars, the collapsed remnants of massive stars that have died in supernova explosions, are some of the most exotic objects in the universe Experts say the event has kickstarted a “new chapter in astrophysics” and confirmed theories about the origin of the mysterious neutron stars. They were also able to use telescopes on satellites and the ground to see the light and radiation that was being flung out of the explosion, which is known as a “kilonova.”

“They [neuron stars] are as close as you can get to a black hole without actually being a black hole,” theoretical astrophysicist Tony Piro, of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Pasadena, California, said in a different statement. “Just one teaspoon of a neutron star weighs as much as all the people on Earth combined.”

This huge explosion also rocked the very fabric of the universe, distorting spacetime. That is a major discovery in itself, marking only the fifth time that gravitational waves have been spotted on Earth and for the first time ever, scientists have spotted both gravitational waves and light coming from the same cosmic event Scientists didn’t just “hear” the violent blast by seeing the ripples in spacetime. Every other gravitational wave detection has been traced to black holes crashing together in remote regions of the universe more than a billion light-years away.

Albert Einstein first predicted the existence of gravitational waves in his theory of general relativity, which was published in 1916. But it took a century for astronomers to detect them directly. That milestone came in September 2015, when LIGO saw gravitational waves emitted by two merging black holes. Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of space-time generated by the acceleration of massive cosmic objects. These ripples move at the speed of light, but they’re much more penetrating; they don’t get scattered or absorbed the way light does. –Space

On Aug. 17, 2017, LIGO’s two detectors, which are located in Louisiana and Washington state, picked up a signal that lasted about 100 seconds.  That’s far longer than the fraction-of-a-second “chirps” spawned by merging black holes. “It immediately appeared to us the source was likely to be neutron stars, the other coveted source we were hoping to see — and promising the world we would see,” David Shoemaker, a spokesman for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and a senior research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, said in a statement.

The landmark discovery initiates the field of “multimessenger astrophysics,” which promises to reveal exciting new insights about the cosmos, researchers said. The find also provides the first solid evidence that neutron-star smashups are the source of much of the universe’s gold, platinum, and other heavy elements.

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Author: Mac Slavo
Views: Read by 198 people
Date: October 17th, 2017
Website: www.SHTFplan.com

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