An artist’s conception illustrates the aftermath of a “kilonova,” a powerful event that happens when two neutron stars merge. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Northwestern Univ./A. Hajela et al.; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss
Strange ‘sonic boom’ accompanied unprecedented event.
- Mysterious X-rays observed 3.5 years after the merger of two neutron stars
- Astrophysicists believe a kilonova afterglow or materials falling into a
Either scenario would be a first for the field. The study was published on February 28, 2022, in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
“We have entered uncharted territory here in studying the aftermath of a neutron star merger,” said Northwestern’s Aprajita Hajela, who led the new study. “We are looking at something new and extraordinary for the very first time. This gives us an opportunity to study and understand new physical processes, which have not before been observed.”
Hajela is a graduate student at Northwestern’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) and in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.
On August 17, 2017, GW170817 made history as the first neutron-star merger detected by both (function(d, s, id){
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