Did star smash-up birth a huge neutron star?

• Autores: Leah Crane
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3152, 2017, pág. 12
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Yun-Wei Vu at Central China Normal University and Zi-Gao Dai at Nanjing University in China have modeled the "kilonova" explosion, which lasts weeks or months. They think there is a neutron star at the spot where the smash-up occurred. There are three main theories for what could be left behind when two neutron stars collide: a black hole, a single neutron star that only lasts for a few milliseconds and then collapses into a black hole, or a stable neutron star that sticks around longer. If it is the latter, it is the biggest they have ever seen. There may be clues in the kilonova. As the original neutron stars orbit each other in their death spiral, they can accelerate up to about a third of the speed of light, says Edo Berger at Harvard University.