Cool! Two Stars Slammed Into Each Other

[roberth]

Progress, as they say, is slow. In science, this is often true even for major breakthroughs; rarely is an entire field of research remade in a single swoop. The Human Genome Project took a decade. Finding the first gravitational waves took multiple decades. So it’s hard to overstate the enormous leap forward that astronomy took on Aug. 17, 2017.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...omes-next/amp/

https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/pr...lease-gw170817

On Aug. 17, the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected something new. Some 130 million light-years away, two super-dense neutron stars, each as small as a city but heavier than the sun, had crashed into each other, producing a colossal convulsion called a kilonova and sending a telltale ripple through space-time to Earth.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/neutr...-sky-20171016/

[Bailey Guns]

I can't even comprehend most of what those articles discussed...but it's cool. A teaspoon of neutron star would weigh a billion tons? I can't even fathom something so dense.

[SuperiorDG]

Old news. This happened like 130 million years ago.

[KevDen2005]

Old news. This happened like 130 million years ago.

Ha, I was waiting for something like that!

[Gman]

Pretty cool stuff. There's so much we humans don't understand about the world around us, under us, and within us.

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

[BPTactical]

I can't even comprehend most of what those articles discussed...but it's cool. A teaspoon of neutron star would weigh a billion tons? I can't even fathom something so dense.

You've not met my wife have you?

[longrange2]

She must be very dense to have married you! Lol.

[bellavite1]

You've not met my wife have you?

...and that the last thing I remember saying, Doc...

[Zundfolge]

That's much cooler than I thought it would be when I read the thread title (I assumed Caitlyn Jenner was driving around Hollywood again).

[Ronin13]

That's much cooler than I thought it would be when I read the thread title (I assumed Caitlyn Jenner was driving around Hollywood again).