Two merging neutron stars of different masses will help reveal the secrets of the universe

Two merging neutron stars of different masses will help reveal the secrets of the universe
Two merging neutron stars of different masses will help reveal the secrets of the universe
Anonim

An important breakthrough in understanding the collision between dead stars and the expansion of the universe was made by an international team of scientists led by researchers from the University of East Anglia, UK.

In their work, astronomers discovered an unusual pulsar - a rotating neutron star with a powerful magnetic field, which regularly emits focused pulses of radio emission from the magnetic poles.

This newly discovered pulsar (known as PSR J1913 + 1102) is part of a binary system that includes another neutron star as a second component.

Neutron stars are the dead remnants of massive stars that exploded like supernovae. They consist of the densest matter known to science - so dense that a ball of such matter the size of a large city weighs several hundred thousand times more than the Earth.

In about half a billion years, these two neutron stars will collide, releasing huge amounts of energy in the form of gravitational waves and light.

“Since one neutron star is significantly more massive than the other, its gravitational influence will distort the shape of a less massive neutron star. As a result, a large amount of hot material will be ejected, and the brightness of the flare accompanying this merger will be significantly higher compared to the case of merging neutron stars of approximately equal mass,”said the lead author of the new study, Dr. Robert Ferdman. According to Ferdman, the famous GW170817 gravitational wave source discovered in 2017 may be a system similar in structure to the PSR J1913 + 1102 system. In addition, systems like PSR J1913 + 1102 can provide an independent determination of the Hubble constant, which is a measure of the speed of the "recession" of galaxies in the Universe, the authors explained.

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