{"id":157937,"date":"2023-02-14T08:25:28","date_gmt":"2023-02-14T14:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/radical-change-needed-after-latest-neutron-star-collision"},"modified":"2023-02-14T08:25:28","modified_gmt":"2023-02-14T14:25:28","slug":"radical-change-needed-after-latest-neutron-star-collision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/radical-change-needed-after-latest-neutron-star-collision","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Radical Change\u2019 Needed After Latest Neutron Star Collision"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/radical-change-needed-after-latest-neutron-star-collision3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Last summer, the gravitational wave observatory known as LIGO <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ligo.org\/detections\/GW190425.php\">caught<\/a> its second-ever glimpse of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.quantamagazine.org\/neutron-star-collision-shakes-space-time-and-lights-up-the-sky-20171016\/\">two neutron stars merging<\/a>. The collision of these incredibly dense objects \u2014 the hulking cores of long-ago supernova explosions \u2014 sent shudders through space-time powerful enough to be detected here on Earth. But unlike the first merger, which conformed to expectations, this latest event has forced astrophysicists to rethink some basic assumptions about what\u2019s lurking out there in the universe. \u201cWe have a dilemma,\u201d said <a href=\"https:\/\/www.astro.ucsc.edu\/faculty\/index.php?uid=raruiz\">Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz<\/a> of the University of California, Santa Cruz.<\/p>\n<p>The exceptionally high mass of the two-star system was the first indication that this collision was unprecedented. And while the heft of the stars alone wasn\u2019t enough to cause alarm, it hinted at the surprises to come.<\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2001.04502\">paper<\/a> recently posted to the scientific preprint site arxiv.org, Ramirez-Ruiz and his colleagues argue that GW190425, as the two-star system is known, challenges everything we thought we knew about neutron star pairs. This latest observation appears to be fundamentally incompatible with scientists\u2019 current understanding of how these stars form, and how often. As a result, researchers may need to rethink years of accepted knowledge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last summer, the gravitational wave observatory known as LIGO caught its second-ever glimpse of two neutron stars merging. The collision of these incredibly dense objects \u2014 the hulking cores of long-ago supernova explosions \u2014 sent shudders through space-time powerful enough to be detected here on Earth. But unlike the first merger, which conformed to expectations, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}