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WASHINGTON (Rahnuma): Astronomers have revealed that a narrow stream of particles moving almost at the speed of light has burst into interstellar space after a pair of neutron stars has fused into a galaxy. at 130 million light-years from Earth.
The study published Wednesday in the journal Nature showed that the merger of neutron stars in August 2017 also caused gravitational ripples in space.
It is the first event to be detected by both gravitational waves and electromagnetic waves, including gamma rays, X-rays, visible light and radio waves.
The consequences of the fusion have been observed by orbiting and ground-based telescopes around the world. Scientists have observed that the characteristics of the waves received change over time and used the changes as clues to reveal the nature of the phenomena that followed the fusion.
According to researchers at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in the United States, the fast jet aircraft is needed to produce the type of gamma ray bursts that theorists would have had to cause due to the fusion of star pairs to neutrons.
They discovered that a region of radio broadcast from the merger had moved and that the motion was so fast that only a jet could explain its speed.
"We measured an apparent motion four times faster than light. This illusion, called superluminal movement, occurs when the jet is directed almost to the Earth and the jet material is approaching the speed of light, "said Kunal Mooley, NRAO.
Astronomers observed the object 75 days after the fusion, then 230 days after.
"It is very likely that this jet is very narrow, at least 5 degrees wide, and that it is pointing only 20 degrees from the direction of the Earth," said Adam Deller of the University of Technology from Swinburne.
"But to match our observations, the material in the jet must also explode at over 97% of the speed of light," said Deller.
According to the researchers, the fusion of the two superdense neutron stars caused an explosion that propelled a spherical shell of debris outwards.
The neutron stars collapsed into a black hole whose powerful gravity began to pull the material toward it. This material formed a fast rotating disk that generated a pair of jets emerging from its poles.
Data from the observations indicated that a jet interacted with the debris, forming a large "cocoon" of outwardly extending material. Such a cocoon would dilate more slowly than a jet.
"The cocoon dominated the radio show until about 60 days after the merger, and later the show was dominated by jet aircraft," said Ore Gottlieb of Tel Aviv University, a leading theorist.
Detection has reinforced the link between neutron star fusions and short-lived gamma-ray bursts, the scientists said.
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