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In August 2017, a group of scientists detected gravitational wave signals indicating a fusion between two neutron stars located some 130 million light years from Earth. The event, the first of its kind to be observed, has been confirmed by several terrestrial and space observatories and has been known as GW170817
Astronomers around the world have focused on fusion to observe events this. However, a few weeks after the detection, the object in question began to disappear behind the glare of our sun, leaving astronomers the choice to wait. It took more than a hundred days to get out of hiding, but when that happened, astronomers from the University of Warwick quickly analyzed the situation in NGC 4993 – the galaxy in which the collision Cataclysmic neutron stars took place
. On the distant galaxy, the Hubble Space Telescope of NASA and the European Space Agency, they have found brilliant remanence from the site of the fusion. The colliding neutron star produced an immensely powerful beam of light, which did not point directly to our planet, but began to spread towards
. This beam of light or remanence, as the researchers Have described, is the result of a stream of material flows from the neutron star at very high speed. Specifically, it is the first visual evidence suggesting that collision ejects powerful material even after 110 days after being observed.
"At first, we saw the visible light fed by the radioactive decay of heavy elements, more than a hundred days later … gone, but now we see a jet of material, ejected at an angle from us, but at almost the speed of light, "Joe Lyman, the lead author of the study, said in a statement. "This is very different from what some have suggested, that the material would not come out in a jet, but in all directions."
"As the reverb brightens, we see the jet structure more deeply and probe the faster components," said co-author of the study, Gavin Lamb. "This will help us understand how these streams of matter, traveling near the speed of light, are formed and how they are accelerated at these phenomenal speeds."
That said, it is also worth noting the observation of this stream reinforces the popular theory that gamma-ray bursts are produced from neutron star fusions.
"If we had looked directly at this beam, we would have seen a truly powerful explosion of gamma rays," Andrew Levan, another author of the study, said. "That means that it's very likely that every fusion neutron star actually creates a gamma-ray explosion, but we only see a small part of them because the jet does not come out." 39, do not align often. "
The study, entitled "Optical remanence of the short burst of gamma rays associated with GW170817", was published on July 2 in the journal Nature Astronomy.
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