{"id":227303,"date":"2025-12-17T01:42:39","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T07:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/possible-superkilonova-exploded-not-once-but-twice"},"modified":"2025-12-17T01:42:39","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T07:42:39","slug":"possible-superkilonova-exploded-not-once-but-twice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/possible-superkilonova-exploded-not-once-but-twice","title":{"rendered":"Possible \u2018superkilonova\u2019 exploded not once but twice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YyBjrmXNNmQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>When the most massive stars reach the ends of their lives, they blow up in spectacular supernova explosions, which seed the universe with heavy elements such as carbon and iron. Another type of explosion\u2014the kilonova\u2014occurs when a pair of dense dead stars, called neutron stars, smash together, forging even heavier elements such as gold and uranium. Such heavy elements are among the basic building blocks of stars and planets.<\/p>\n<p>So far, only one <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2024-04-enable-remarkable-gravitational.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">kilonova<\/a> has been unambiguously confirmed to date, a historic event known as GW170817, which took place in 2017. In that case, two neutron stars smashed together, sending ripples in space-time, known as gravitational waves, as well as light waves across the cosmos.<\/p>\n<p>The cosmic blast was detected in gravitational waves by the National Science Foundation\u2019s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) and its European partner, the Virgo gravitational-wave detector, and in light waves by dozens of ground-based and space telescopes around the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When the most massive stars reach the ends of their lives, they blow up in spectacular supernova explosions, which seed the universe with heavy elements such as carbon and iron. Another type of explosion\u2014the kilonova\u2014occurs when a pair of dense dead stars, called neutron stars, smash together, forging even heavier elements such as gold and [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227303","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\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}