Scientists rejoice as telescopes capture ‘most spectacular fireworks in universe’, an epic collision that creates gold
‘We finally now know what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object and it’s a kilonova’
It was a faint signal, but it told of one of the most violent acts in the universe, and it would soon reveal secrets of the cosmos, including how gold was created.
Astronomers around the world reacted to the signal quickly, focusing telescopes located on every continent and even in orbit to a distant spot in the sky.
What they witnessed in mid-August and revealed Monday was the long-ago collision of two neutron stars – a phenomenon California Institute of Technology’s David H. Reitze called “the most spectacular fireworks in the universe.”
“When these things collide, all hell breaks loose,” he said.
We already knew that iron came from a stellar explosion, the calcium in your bones came from stars and now we know the gold in your wedding ring came from merging neutron stars
“This is getting everything you wish for,” said Syracuse University physics professor Duncan Brown, one of more than 4,000 scientists involved in the blitz of science that the crash kicked off. “This is our fantasy observation.”