Hey guys!
I'm Jon and WELCOME, to Respect Your Intellect!
We may have detected the first observation
of a black hole swallowing a neutron star
through gravitational waves.
So let's talk about why we still need to confirm
it and what this discovery could reveal about
the interactions between the densest objects
in the universe.
Don't forget to hit the like and subscribe
buttons and lllet's get started!
The LIGO and VIRGO collaboration is a scientific
collaboration of international physics institutes
and research groups dedicated to the search
for gravitational waves.
Gravitational waves are disturbances in the
fabric of spacetime that travel at the speed
of light and they're generated by massive
bodies when they're accelerated or disturbed.
Members of the collaboration have access to
both US-based LIGO detectors in Hanford, Washington
and in Livingston, Lousiana.
They also have access to the Virgo detector
in Pisa, Italy, and the GEO 600 detector in
Sarstedt, Germany.
Throughout all the institutions and research
groups involved, there about 1,200 scientists
in total.
The collaboration was successful in finding
the first gravitational waves on September
14th, 2015 and have since won many awards
for their achievements.
In 2016, they won the Special Breakthough
Prize in Fundamental Physics, the Gruber Prize
in Cosmology, and the Enrico Fermi Prize.
In 2017, they won the Bruno Rossi Prize, the
Albert Einstein Medal, and the Princess of
Asturias Award.
On April 1st, 2019, they started their new
observing run called 03 that's planned to
last a whole year and it's twice as sensitive
than the previous run.
On April 25, 2019, they found a cataclysmic
merger of two neutron stars for only the second
time.
This happened about 500 million light-years
from Earth.
The problem with this detection is that only
one of the LIGO facilities picked up the signal
along with VIRGO.
So with only 2 out of the 3 LIGO/VIRGO detectors
having picked up the signal, it makes the
location of the source uncertain.
It's currently only narrowed down to a quarter
of the sky; which is an extremely large region.
Since it could take a long time to confirm
this one by finding the source, we're going
to talk about the next signal they found.
On April 26, 2019, just one day after the
detection of the merging neutron stars, all
three facilities picked up the signal from
a neutron star and black hole collision.
This event is estimated to have taken place
about 1.2 billion light-years from Earth.
Since all three facilities picked up the signal,
we were able to reduce the uncertainty a lot
more than the signal from the two neutron
stars colliding.
Instead of narrowing down to 25% of the sky,
this time it was narrowed down to 3% of the
sky.
It's still a large region to look through
though so it might take a bit of time to confirm.
Here's what Professor Alberto Vecchio, head
of Astrophysics and Space Research at the
University of Birmingham, and director of
the Institute of Gravitational Wave Astronomy,
had to say about it: "All the astronomers
are now chasing an unfortunately enormous
patch of the sky to see whether there’s
some light that has switched on at that time,".
Collisions like these latest ones also send
out radiation when energy is released during
the collision; so it's visible in many different
wavelengths as well.
David Reitze who's a Research Professor of
Physics at Caltech and Executive Director
of LIGO said "The latest LIGO-Virgo observing
run is proving to be the most exciting one
so far,", "We’re already seeing hints of
the first observation of a black hole swallowing
a neutron star.
If it holds up, this would be a trifecta for
LIGO and Virgo — in three years, we’ll
have observed every type of black hole and
neutron star collision.".
He also said "We're especially curious about
the April 26 candidate.
Unfortunately, the signal is rather weak.
It’s like listening to somebody whisper
a word in a busy café; it can be difficult
to make out the word or even to be sure that
the person whispered at all.
It will take some time to reach a conclusion
about this candidate.".
The researchers estimated the chance of it
being a glitch at around 14%, leaving an 86%
chance that the event happened.
This isn't a "given" just yet but it's good
enough to announce the possibility before
the confirmation.
So let's talk a bit about neutron stars and
black holes.
Neutron stars are the most massive stars and
also the smallest; meaning that they're also
the most dense.
The only thing more dense than a neutron star
is a black hole.
Neutron stars form during some supernova explosions
when giant stars die so they're considered
supernova remnants.
Dying stars that are too massive to form a
neutron star can form black holes instead.
Neutron stars are made up of tightly-packed
neutrons so it's like a 12 mile wide atomic
nucleus, on average.
It's actually even denser than atomic nuclei,
by 10 to 100 times the mass, since neutrons
are a bit more massive than protons.
Just the outer crust of the neutron star has
neutrons packed so tight that it's about 10
billion times stronger than steel.
About 1 teaspoon of neutron star material
has a mass of about 5.5 billion tonnes, which
is about 900 times the Great Pyramid of Giza;
all in just 1 teaspoon of material.
If the entire Earth were as dense as a neutron
star, it wouldn't be 12,000 km in diameter,
it would be about 305 meters.
If we forget about the crazy gravitational
pull, this would be about the size where you
could go from pole to pole in a 5-minute walk.
As for black holes, contrary to what your
intuition might tell you, the bigger they
are, the less dense they are.
This means that the gravitational pull near
the threshold of the black hole would be less
intense and might allow a neutron star to
simply disappear instead of being ripped apart.
Vecchio said "The neutron star would just
dive in and nothing happens, that’s it,".
With smaller black holes and a much more fierce
gravitational pull at the event horizon, they
could potentially rip apart neutron stars
and swallow them in multiple big chunks, instead.
On this, Vecchio said "Then you’d have this
extremely dense material travelling at a fraction
of the speed of light,".
He also said it could release spectacular
blasts of radiation that could be spotted
by telescopes on Earth.
If this all turns out to be confirmed and
to be true, it would be the first evidence
that black holes and neutron stars can pair
up in binary systems.
It could reveal many new details about whether
the neutron star was ripped apart into chunks
before getting to the event horizon or if
it went in with its full mass and just disappeared.
This could even reveal new things about how
black holes behave and interact with other
massive objects.
Since LIGO started observing in 2015, its
sensitivity has been increased significantly
and it's now able to make several detections
every single month.
This could even help find some of the more
exotic objects that are theorized but not
yet observed, like boson stars or mini black
holes.
Patrick Brady, who's a Professor of Physics
at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and
spokesman for the LIGO collaboration, said
"We're opening a new window on the universe
and this will hopefully bring us a whole new
perspective on what's out there.".
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