Tag: Stars

The gold that comprises the ring on your ring, the jewelry, and the uranium used as fuel in nuclear power plants is believed to come from the violent conditions created when two ultradense dead stars called neutron stars collide.  This collision between neutron stars also generates ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves, blasts of high-energy radiation called gamma-ray bursts, and a flash of light called a kilonova that can be detected here on Earth. Signatures from just such an event were detected on 17 August 2017. Now, a team of…

Astronomers watched 35 explosive outbursts from a rare repeating “fast radio burst” (FRB) as it shifted in frequency like a “cosmic slide whistle,” blinking in a puzzling pattern never seen before. FRBs are millisecond-long flashes of light from beyond the Milky Way that are capable of producing as much energy in a few seconds as the sun does in a year. FRBs are believed to come from powerful objects like neutron stars with intense magnetic fields  —  also called magnetars  —  or from cataclysmic events like stellar collisions or the…

Astronomers have developed a new way of measuring cosmic distances by listening to the frequencies of “music” played by vibrating stars that collectively act as a vast orchestra of different cosmic instruments. The results could help the European Space Agency (ESA) satellite Gaia better measure the positions of about two billion stars as well as their distances from Earth and movements while  building a precise, 3-dimensional map of the Milky Way. Scientists typically use a process called parallax, the apparent shift in an object’s position when seen from two different…