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Astronomy
#17
The first observation of a neutron star merger in gravitational waves – as well as gamma rays, visible light, and other forms of electromagnetic radiation – is announced.
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GW170817 is a gravitational wave (GW) signal observed by the LIGO and Virgo detectors on 17 August 2017. The GW was produced by the last minutes of two neutron stars spiralling closer to each other and finally merging.
Unlike all previous GW detections, which were of merging black holes not expected to produce a detectable electromagnetic signal,[2][3][a] the aftermath of the merger was also seen by many conventional telescopes, marking a significant breakthrough for multi-messenger astronomy.[5][6][7][8][9]

Technically, there are three separate observations, and strong evidence that they come from the same astronomical source:
  • The gravitational wave signal, which had a duration of approximately 100 seconds, and shows the characteristics expected of the inspiral of two neutron stars. Using three detectors (two LIGO and one VIRGO), an approximate sky position could be computed.
  • The short gamma-ray burst GRB 170817A[10][11] detected by the Fermi and INTEGRAL spacecraft 1.7 seconds after the GW signal ended. These detectors have very limited directional sensitivity, but indicated a large area of the sky which overlapped the gravitational wave position. It has long been theorized that short gamma-ray bursts are caused by neutron star mergers.
  • The optical transient AT 2017gfo, found 11 hours later in the galaxy NGC 4993[12] during a search of the region indicated by the GW detection. This was observed by numerous telescopes, from radio to X-ray wavelengths, over the following days and weeks, and shows the characteristics (a fast-moving, rapidly-cooling cloud of neutron-rich material) expected of debris ejected from a neutron-star merger.
The event was officially announced on 16 October 2017[10][11] at press conferences at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. and at the ESO headquarters in Garching bei München in Germany.[12]

The first public information about the event was tweeted by astronomer J. Craig Wheeler of the University of Texas at Austin on 18 August 2017. He later deleted the tweet and apologized for scooping the official announcement protocol. Other people followed up on the rumor, and reported that the public logs of several major telescopes listed priority interruptions in order to observe NGC 4993, a galaxy 40 Mpc (130 Mly) away in the Hydra constellation.[13][14] The collaboration had earlier declined to comment on the rumors, not adding to a previous announcement that there were several triggers under analysis.[15][16]

he first electromagnetic signal detected was GRB 170817A, a short gamma ray burst, detected 1.74±0.05 s after the merger time and lasting for a few seconds.[11][13]

GRB 170817A was discovered by the Fermi gamma-ray telescope, with an automatic alert issued just 14 seconds after the GRB detection. After the LIGO/Virgo circular 40 minutes later, manual processing of data from the INTEGRAL gamma-ray telescope also detected the same GRB. The difference in arrival time between Fermi and INTEGRAL helped to improve the sky localization.
This GRB was relatively faint given the proximity of NGC 4993, possibly due to its jets not being pointed directly toward Earth, but rather at an angle of about 30 degrees to the side.[12][20]

series of alerts to other astronomers were issued, beginning with a report of the gamma-ray detection and single-detector LIGO trigger at 13:21, and a three-detector sky location at 17:54 UTC.[18] These prompted a massive search by many survey and robotic telescopes. In addition its expected large size (about 150 times the area of a full moon), this search was challenging because the search area was near the Sun in the sky and thus visible for only an hour after twilight for any given telescope.
In total six teams (SSS, DLT40, VISTA, Master, DECam, Las Campanas Observatory (LCO) Chile) imaged the same new source independently in a 90-minute interval.[1]:5 The first to detect optical light associated with the collision was the Swope Supernova Survey, which found it in an image of NGC4993 taken 10 hours and 52 minutes after the event[11][1][21] by the 1 meter (3 ft 3 in) diameter Swope Telescope operating in the near infrared at LCO, Chile. They were also the first to announce it, naming their detection SSS17a in a circular issued 12h 26min post-event. The new source was later given an official International Astronomical Union (IAU) designation of AT 2017gfo.

The SSS team surveyed all galaxies in the region of space predicted by the gravitational wave observations, and identified a single new transient.[20][21] By identifying the host galaxy of the merger, it is possible to provide a more accurate distance than based on gravitational waves alone. The detection of the optical/near-infrared source provided a huge improvement in localisation, reducing the uncertainty from several degrees to 0.0001 degree; this enabled many large ground and space telescopes to follow-up the source over the following days and weeks. Within hours after localization, many additional observations were made across the infrared and visible spectrum.[21] Over the following days, the color of the optical source changed from blue to red as the source expanded and cooled.[20]
Numerous optical and infrared spectra were observed; early spectra were nearly featureless, but after a few days, broad features emerged indicative of material ejected at roughly 10 percent of light speed.

Nine days later, the source was detected in X-rays by the Chandra X-ray Observatory (after non-detections at earlier times). Sixteen days after the merger event, the source was detected in radio with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico.[12] More than 70 observatories covering the electromagnetic spectrum observed the event.[12]

No neutrinos consistent with the source were found in follow-up searches.[5][1] A possible explanation for the non-detection of neutrinos is because the event was observed at a large off-axis angle i.e. the outflow jet was not directed toward Earth.[22]

(an outflow jet directed at the Earth would have been extremely troublesome -- my comment).

The gravitational wave signal indicated that the gravitational wave event was associated with the collision of two neutron stars[13][14][16][23] with a total mass of 2.82+0.47


−0.09 times the mass of the sun (solar masses).[5] If low spins are assumed, consistent with those observed in binary neutron stars that will merge within a Hubble time, the total mass is 2.74+0.04
−0.01
 M.

The masses of the component stars have greater uncertainty. The larger (m1) has a 90% chance of being between 1.36 and 2.26 M☉, and the smaller (m2) has a 90% chance of being between 0.86 and 1.36 M☉.[24] Under the low spin assumption, the ranges are 1.36 to 1.60 M☉ for m1 and 1.17 to 1.36 M☉ for m2.
The chirp mass, a directly observable parameter which may be very roughly equated to the geometric mean of the masses, is measured at 1.188+0.004
−0.002
 M☉.[24]

The neutron star merger event is thought to be followed by a kilonova. Kilonovae are candidates for the production of half the chemical elements heavier than iron in the Universe.[12] A total of 16,000 times the mass of the Earth in heavy elements is believed to have formed, including approximately ten Earth masses just of the two elements gold and platinum.[25]
It is not known what object was produced by the merger. It could be either a neutron star heavier than any known neutron star, or a black hole lighter than any known black hole.[20]


Scientific interest in the event was enormous, with dozens of preliminary papers (and almost 100 preprints[26]) published the day of the announcement, including eight letters in Science,[27] six in Nature, and 23 in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters devoted to the subject.[6]

This is not the first observation that is known to be of a neutron star merger; GRB 130603B was the first observed kilonova. It is however, by far the best observation, making this the strongest evidence to date to confirm the hypothesis that mergers of binary stars are the cause of short gamma-ray bursts.[5]

The event also provides a limit on the difference between the speed of light and that of gravity. Assuming the first photons were emitted between zero and ten seconds after peak gravitational wave emission, the difference between the speeds of gravitational and electromagnetic waves, vGW − vEM, is constrained to between −3×10−15 and +7×10−16 times the speed of light.[24] In addition, it allowed investigation of the equivalence principle (through Shapiro delay measurement) and Lorentz invariance.[5] The limits of possible violations of Lorentz invariance (values of 'gravity sector coefficients') are reduced by the new observations, by up to ten orders of magnitude.[24] GW170817 also excluded some alternatives to general relativity, including variants of scalar–tensor theory, Hořava–Lifshitz gravity[28][29][30] and bimetric gravity.[31]

Gravitational wave signals such as GW170817 may be used as a standard siren to provide an independent measurement of the Hubble constant.[32][33]

Electromagnetic observations helped to support the theory that the mergers of neutron stars contribute to [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-process]r-process nucleosynthesis.[21]
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist  but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.


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Messages In This Thread
Astronomy - by radind - 05-13-2016, 03:57 PM
RE: Astronomy - by radind - 05-17-2016, 11:59 AM
RE: Astronomy - by pbrower2a - 05-18-2016, 07:25 AM
RE: Astronomy - by radind - 05-18-2016, 10:29 AM
RE: Astronomy - by pbrower2a - 05-18-2016, 05:18 PM
RE: Astronomy - by radind - 06-10-2016, 04:20 PM
RE: Astronomy - by Odin - 06-11-2016, 08:56 AM
RE: Astronomy - by radind - 06-11-2016, 10:34 AM
RE: Astronomy - by Odin - 06-11-2016, 12:25 PM
RE: Astronomy - by Odin - 06-11-2016, 12:54 PM
RE: Astronomy - by pbrower2a - 06-11-2016, 08:36 PM
RE: Astronomy - by radind - 06-15-2016, 06:46 PM
RE: Astronomy - by pbrower2a - 06-17-2016, 02:18 PM
RE: Astronomy - by pbrower2a - 09-19-2016, 08:55 PM
RE: Astronomy - by pbrower2a - 10-02-2016, 12:34 PM
RE: Astronomy - by Eric the Green - 11-27-2016, 01:07 AM
RE: Astronomy - by pbrower2a - 10-21-2017, 05:04 PM
RE: Astronomy - by pbrower2a - 11-22-2017, 09:27 PM
RE: Astronomy - by pbrower2a - 03-12-2018, 04:40 AM
RE: Astronomy - by pbrower2a - 06-10-2018, 09:29 PM
RE: Astronomy - by pbrower2a - 06-10-2018, 09:47 PM
RE: Astronomy - by pbrower2a - 01-19-2020, 05:46 AM
RE: Astronomy - by pbrower2a - 12-21-2020, 02:42 AM
RE: Astronomy - by pbrower2a - 12-21-2020, 03:54 PM
RE: Astronomy - by Eric the Green - 12-22-2020, 12:21 AM
RE: Astronomy - by pbrower2a - 09-08-2022, 10:30 PM

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