Page 28 - ARUBA TODAY

A28 SCIENCE
Tuesday 17 OcTOber 2017
Scientists witness huge cosmic crash, find origins of gold

By SETH BORENSTEIN alesced into heavy ele- since the Big Bang. By using
AP Science Writer ments, like gold, platinum LIGO to measure gravita-
WASHINGTON (AP) — It was and uranium. tional waves while watch-
a faint signal, but it told Scientists had suspected ing this event unfold, re-
of one of the most violent neutron star collisions had searchers came up with a
acts in the universe, and it enough power to cre- new estimate for how fast
would soon reveal secrets ate heavier elements, but that is happening, the so-
of the cosmos, including weren’t certain until they called Hubble Constant.
how gold was created. witnessed it. Before this, scientists came
Astronomers around the “We see the gold being up with two slightly differ-
world reacted to the sig- formed,” said Syracuse’s ent answers using different
nal quickly, focusing tele- Brown. techniques. The rough fig-
scopes located on every Calculations from a tele- ure that came out of this
continent and even in orbit scope measuring ultravio- event is between the origi-
to a distant spot in the sky. David Reitze of the California Institute of Technology and the let light showed that the nal two, Reitze said.
What they witnessed in mid- executive director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational- combined mass of the The first optical images
August and revealed Mon- Wave Observatory, or LIGO, speaks at the National Press Club in heavy elements from this showed a bright blue dot
day was the long-ago colli- Washington, Monday, Oct. 16, 2017. explosion is 1,300 times the that was very hot, which
sion of two neutron stars — Associated Press mass of Earth. And all that was likely the start of the
a phenomenon California burst of gamma rays and a by LIGO were generated stuff — including lighter ele- heavy element creation
Institute of Technology’s gravitational wave, a faint by colliding black holes. ments — was thrown out in process amid the neutron
David H. Reitze called “the ripple in the fabric of space But black holes let no light all different directions and star debris, Drout said.
most spectacular fireworks and time, first theorized by escape, so astronomers is now speeding across the After a day or two that blue
in the universe.” Albert Einstein. could see nothing. universe. faded, becoming much
“When these things collide, “This is like a cosmic atom This time there was plenty to Perhaps one day the ma- fainter and redder. And af-
all hell breaks loose,” he smasher at a scale far be- see, measure and analyze: terial will clump together ter three weeks it was com-
said. yond humans would be matter, light, and other ra- into planets the way ours pletely gone, she said.
Measurements of the light capable of building,” said diation. The Hubble Space was formed, Reitze said — This almost didn’t happen.
and other energy emanat- Andy Howell, a staff scien- Telescope even got a maybe ones with rich veins Eight days after the signal
ing from the crash have tist at the Las Cumbres Ob- snapshot of the afterglow. of precious metals. came through, the LIGO
helped scientists explain servatory. “We finally now Finding where the crash “We already knew that iron gravitational waves were
how planet-killing gamma know what happens when happened wasn’t easy. came from a stellar explo- shut down for a year’s worth
ray bursts are born, how an unstoppable force Eventually scientists nar- sion, the calcium in your of planned upgrades. A
fast the universe is expand- meets an immovable ob- rowed the location down bones came from stars and month later the whole area
ing, and where heavy ele- ject and it’s a kilonova.” to 100 galaxies, began a now we know the gold in where the crash happened
ments like platinum and The crash happened 130 closer search of those, and your wedding ring came would have been blocked
gold come from. million years ago, while found it in the ninth galaxy from merging neutron from astronomers’ prying
“This is getting everything dinosaurs still roamed on they looked at. stars,” said University of Cal- eyes by the sun.
you wish for,” said Syracuse Earth, but the signal didn’t It is like “the classic chal- ifornia Santa Cruz’s Ryan Scientists involved with the
University physics profes- arrive on Earth until Aug. 17 lenge of finding a needle in Foley. search for gravitational
sor Duncan Brown, one of after traveling 130 million the haystack with the add- The crash also helped ex- waves said this was the
more than 4,000 scientists light-years. A light-year is ed challenge that the nee- plain the origins of one of event they had prepared
involved in the blitz of sci- 5.88 trillion miles. dle is fading away and the the most dangerous forc- for over more than 20 years.
ence that the crash kicked Signals were picked up haystack is moving,” said es of the cosmos — short The findings are “of spec-
off. “This is our fantasy ob- within 1.7 seconds of each Marcelle Soares-Santos, an gamma ray bursts, focused tacular importance,” said
servation.” other, by NASA’s Fermi astrophysicist at Brandeis beams of radiation that Penn State physicist Abhay
It started in a galaxy called telescope, which detects University. could erase life on any Ashtekar, who wasn’t part
NGC 4993, seen from Earth gamma rays, and gravity “The completeness of this planet that happened to of the research. “This is re-
in the Hydra constellation. wave detectors in Louisi- picture from the begin- get in the way. These bursts ally brand new.”
Two neutron stars, col- ana and Washington state ning to the end is unprec- shoot out in two different Almost all of the discoveries
lapsed cores of stars so that are a part of the LIGO edented,” said Columbia directions perpendicular to confirmed existing theories,
dense that a teaspoon of Laboratory , whose found- University physics professor where the two neutron stars but had not been proven
their matter would weigh ers won a Nobel Prize ear- Szabolcs Marka. “There are first crash, Reitze said. — an encouraging result
1 billion tons, danced ever lier this month. A worldwide many, many extraordinary Luckily for us, the beams of for theorists who have been
faster and closer together alert went out to focus tele- discoveries within the dis- gamma rays were not fo- trying to explain what is
until they collided, said scopes on what became covery.” cused on Earth and were happening in the cosmos,
Carnegie Institution astron- the most well-observed as- The colliding stars spewed generated too far away to said France Cordova, an
omer Maria Drout. tronomical event in history. bright blue, super-hot de- be a threat, he said. astrophysicist who directs
The crash, called a kilo- Before August, the only oth- bris that was dense and Scientists knew that the uni- the National Science Foun-
nova, generated a fierce er gravity waves detected unstable. Some of it co- verse has been expanding dation. q