- 4603 -
NEUTRON STARS COLLIDE
- gives birth to atoms? -
Neutron stars collide and explode to create black hole and 'birth
atoms' For the first time, we see the
creation of atoms; we can measure the temperature of the matter and see the
microphysics in this remote neutron star explosion.
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---------------------------------- 4603
- NEUTRON STARS
COLLIDE - gives birth to atoms?
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- Astronomers have witnessed the titanic
collision between two neutron stars that resulted in the birth of the smallest
black hole ever seen and forged precious metals like gold, silver, and uranium.
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- This violent and powerful collision occurred
130 million light-years away from us in the galaxy “NGC 4993” was created with
a range of instruments, including the Hubble Space Telescope. It will hopefully
paint a picture of the "past, present, and future" of the mergers of
these dense dead stars. This could reveal the origins of elements heavier than
iron, which can't be forged in even the most massive stars.
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- The collision and merger of the neutron
stars results in a powerful blast of light called a "kilonova." As
the wreckage of this event expands at nearly the speed of light, the kilonova
illuminates its surroundings with light as bright as hundreds of millions of
suns.
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- We can now see the moment where atomic
nuclei and electrons are uniting in the afterglow. For the first time, we see
the creation of atoms, we can measure the temperature of the matter, and we can
see the microphysics in this remote explosion.
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- The gold in your jewelry came from the
universe's most violents events. Neutron
stars are born when stars at least 8 times as massive as the sun exhaust their
fuel for nuclear fusion and can no longer support themselves against their own
gravity.
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- The outer layers of these stars are blasted
away in supernova explosions, leaving a stellar remnant with a mass equal to
between 1 and 2 suns crushed into a diameter of around 12 miles.
The collapse of the core
forces electrons and protons together, creating a sea of particles called
neutrons.
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- This material is so dense that a mere sugar
cube's worth of neutron star matter would weigh 1 billion tons if brought to
Earth. That's about the same as cramming 150,000,000 elephants into the same
space that a sugar cube occupies.
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- Neutron stars don't always live in
isolation. Some of these dead stars occupy binary systems along with a
companion living star. In rare instances, this companion star is also massive
enough to create a neutron star, and it isn't "kicked away" by the
supernova explosion that creates the first neutron star.
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- The result is a system with two neutron
stars orbiting each other. These objects are so dense that as they swirl around
each other, they generate ripples in spacetime (the four-dimensional
unification of space and time) called “gravitational waves? that ripple through
space, carrying away angular momentum.
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- As the system loses angular momentum, the
orbit of the neutron stars tightens, and the neutron stars move closer to each
other. This results in gravitational waves rippling away faster and faster,
carrying away more and more angular momentum.
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- This situation ends when neutron stars are
close enough for their immense gravity to take over and drag these extremely
dense dead stars together to collide and merge.
This collision sprays out neutron-rich matter with temperatures of many
billions of degrees, thousands of times hotter than the sun. These temperatures
are so hot that they are similar to those of the rapidly inflating universe
just one second after the Big Bang.
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- Ejected particles like electrons and
neutrons dance around the body, birthed by the colliding neutron stars, which
rapidly collapse to form a black hole in a fog of plasma that cools over the
next few days.
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- Atoms in this cooling cloud of plasma
quickly grab free neutrons via what is called the “rapid neutron capture
process” (r-process) and also ensnare free electrons. This creates very heavy
but unstable particles that rapidly decay. This decay releases the light that
astronomers see as kilonovas, but it also creates lighter elements that are
still heavier than iron, like gold, silver and uranium.
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- This team saw the afterglow of particles
being snatched to forge heavy elements like Strontium and Yttrium, reasoning
that other heavy elements were undoubtedly created in the aftermath of this
neutron star collision.
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- The matter expands so fast and gains in
size so rapidly, to the extent where it takes hours for the light to travel
across the explosion. This is why, just
by observing the remote end of the fireball, we can see further back in the
history of the explosion. Closer to us, the electrons have hooked to atomic
nuclei, but on the other side, on the far side of the newborn black hole, the
'present' is still just the future.
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- This astrophysical explosion develops
dramatically hour by hour, so no single telescope can follow its entire story.
The viewing angle of the individual telescopes to the event is blocked by the
rotation of the Earth. But by combining
the existing measurements from Australia, South Africa, and the Hubble Space
Telescope, we can follow its development in great detail.
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November 4, 2024 NEUTRON STARS
COLLIDE - gives birth to atoms? 4603
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------ “Jim Detrick” -----------
--------------------- --- Monday, November 11,
2024
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