Astronomers Are Cumming Themselves Because Two Small Stars Collided 130 Million Years Ago
CNN — For the first time, two neutron stars in a nearby galaxy have been observed engaging in a spiral death dance around one another until they collided. What resulted from that collision is being called an “unprecedented” discovery that is ushering in a new era of astronomy, scientists announced Monday.
“We can now fill in a few more tiles in the jigsaw puzzle that is the story of our universe,” said Laura Cadonati, deputy spokeswoman for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and professor in the school of physics at Georgia Tech.
The collision created the first observed instance of a single source emitting ripples in space-time, known as gravitational waves, as well as light, which was released in the form of a two-second gamma ray burst. The collision also created heavy elements such as gold, platinum and lead, scattering them across the universe in a kilonova — similar to a supernova — after the initial fireball.
It is being hailed as the first known instance of multi-messenger astrophysics: one source in the universe emitting two kinds of waves, gravitational and electromagnetic.
Big space guy here. Huge space guy. Fucking love that shit. Have been down the rabbit hole of all the space docs on Netflix multiple times. About every six months I go through a two-week space phase. It’s all I think about, start texting my friends in Missouri at night telling them if they look up we can all just be organisms on the side of a rock staring at the same far-off stars. It’s beautiful. And I don’t just tackle one astronomy series but go down that rabbit hole so fucking deep I run out of real programs, start scouring the Netflix basement floor for any and all space-related crumbs I can find. Then the YouTube floor. I’ve spent an embarrassing number of hours watching idiots with a webcam and access to Wikipedia take me through the history of the universe. It sucks but it’s also awesome, just like Ballers featuring The Rock.
The point is, I love space. I really do… BUT, I can’t stand when astronomers cum themselves over stupid shit like this. Two tiny stars ran into each other ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY MILLION LIGHTYEARS AWAY? Whoop de do. Do you understand how fucking far away that is. You could’ve left earth before the dinosaurs existed going the fastest conceivable speed in the universe and by the time you went to this star collision and returned, not only would the dinosaurs have come and gone but humanity would be in about our 20 millionth year. Newt Gingrich would be running a moon empire.
These stars aren’t even huge they’re tiny (but dense). They’re about the diameter of Chicago but denser than our sun (kinda cool actually). What’s not cool is astronomy is freaking out about them colliding. I won’t stand for it. I’m getting push notifications and shit over these fuckers running into each other.
Look at some of these twitter headlines.
“Vein of gold”!? Relax Shakespeare. We learned in like 8th grade that stars run into each other and create crazy elements. Day one stuff.
Bottom line, astronomy and NASA need to focus on two things: aliens and doomsday prevention options. I’v said this before but that’s it. Either show us E.T. or stop an asteroid that’s going to destroy earth from destroying earth. Beyond that nobody’s getting excited. We put a man on the moon FIFTY YEARS ago for fucks sake but you expect erect dicks over a couple city-sized stars running into each other back when T-Rex was dominating the Great Plains? No chance.
PS — If you care about the hooplah, here’s some science.