Star Quakes and Monster Shock Waves

(caltech.edu)

43 points | by gmays 3 days ago ago

7 comments

  • chasil 14 hours ago ago

    "When these two bodies finally merge, the black hole will typically swallow the neutron star whole."

    Not whole.

    A small amount of matter will escape, both iron nuclei (from the crust) and free neutrons.

    The R-process of stellar nucleosynthesis will then take place.

    As I understand it, a normal output between three and 13 earth masses of gold is typical.

    This total mass is insignificant compared to the final mass of the combined object, but it is also the engine that creates many elements higher than iron on the periodic table.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_nucleosynthesis

    https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/acba16

  • maomaomiumiu 43 minutes ago ago

    Hard to wrap my head around the scale of this. Starquakes, shockwaves, and gravitational ripples from colliding neutron stars—it’s like science fiction, but real. Wild what we’re able to detect and model nowadays.

  • bdbenton5255 14 hours ago ago

    Absolutely fascinating. Detecting ripples in the fabric of space and time? The NSF is still producing Nobel worthy discoveries.

    I've been working on a Deep Convolutional Generative Adverserial Network (DCGAN) which utilizes astronomical data and have been on an astronomy kick.

    Cutting funding to pure science research is a profound mistake, pure science research puts our nation at the forefront of technological discovery and is of national strategic importance.

  • DinoNuggies45 3 hours ago ago

    I find it crazy how people discover these things. It feels like all this stuff should be impossible and it’s so amazing what is accomplished!

  • HelloUsername 13 hours ago ago

    Based on the title I first thought it would be the "light echoes" from a supernova explosion:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwuVXtIU0is

  • pixelpoet 13 hours ago ago

    I would really love to go back to university and study numerical relativity, MHD etc. Such a fascinating and deep field, and I'm already struggling with just doing classical N-body accurately!

  • xqcgrek2 7 hours ago ago

    eh this seems to make a lot of unjustified assumptions approximations hyping some simulations that may or may not have any relevance to what happens in nature