Neutron Star Black Hole Collision

Scientists at the Keck Observatory, based in Hawaii, think that they could have an exciting find, something that would look like a galactic playoff match: star of the nebula against black hole. The black hole wins, but capturing the act of destruction, as they believe, would be a type of collision never seen before.

"It's like Christmas Eve," ScienceAlert told astronomer Ryan Foley of the University of California. "I'm just waiting to see what's under the tree."

The event was named S190814bv and was detected by LIGO interferometers (gravitational wave laser interferometer) and Virgo on August 14th. Interferometers merge two or more light sources to develop what is called an interference pattern. These patterns of interference can then be measured and analyzed.

Geoffrey Mo, a LIGO scientist, wrote in an email on the NASA website that "there is strong evidence" of the collision between a black hole and a neutron star. What is the strength? He feels over 99% over, according to his email.

This discovery stems from the still-burgeoning field of gravitational wave detection, which began in 2016, when LIGO scientists announced that they had detected for the first time gravitational waves coming from a hole black. These gravitational waves are caused by violent black hole collisions with other bodies.

Neutron stars and black holes share common origins: these are the remains of a dead star whose density almost exceeds the imagination. If the discovery holds, it has the possibility to prove the reality of a spatial phenomenon that has been observed until now only in the imaginary: a binary system in which two bodies are sufficiently close so that their gravitational attraction have everyone around him orbit. another around a center of mass known as the barycenter.

If it was a binary system, its end was violent. The gravitational waves detected by the collision of the two bodies paint a picture for scientists by their speed and acceleration.

"The gravitational wave signal provides information on the rotation of individual objects and their orientation relative to the axis of the orbit," said physicist Peter Veitch from the University of Adelaide in Australia and OzGrav (the Australian branch of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration), says ScienceAlert.

This group "seeks to see if the rotation of individual objects is aligned, which might suggest that they were initially in a binary system," he says. "Whereas if a compact object were captured by another during galaxy fusion, for example, you might expect these objects to have different spins pointing in different directions."

This discovery makes it possible to further study neutron stars, the most dense stars known. If scientists could observe one tearing apart, they could also hypothetically study the bowels. Their next task is to detect the star's location by searching for electromagnetic radiation.

The findings come amidst controversy over another potential observatory near Keck, known as Thirty-meter telescope (TMT) on Mauna Kea, sacred religious site of Hawaiian culture. Keck was part of the action centers of the demonstrators who were trying to stop the construction of the TMT, which resulted in a 4-week closure of existing observatories on Mauna Kea. But last week, protesters and authorities negotiated an agreement to reopen Keck.

Source: ScienceAlert