A Bright Light Seen Across the Universe

by

by wj

This is really more Dr Science's area.  But since she is having problems connecting, I figured someone else needed to put it out there. 

Basically, on August 17 (but just formally announced today) astronomers detected both  electromagnetic radiations and gravitational radiations for an explosive merging of two neutron stars.  These sort of events are thought to be responsible for creating everything from iodine (without which life as we know it doesn't happen) to gold to uranium.  They are not thought to be particularly rare, but this is the first time one has been observed like this. 

It made the local paper, as well as the Economist and probably lots of others, so you may have seen it already.  But what you might have missed is today's NASA "Astronomy Picture of the Day", which has a video that is simply awesome.

26 thoughts on “A Bright Light Seen Across the Universe”

  13. 130 light years is “close”. 130 MILLION is 6 orders of magnitude farther, though admittedly 2 orders of magnitude below the limit of the observable universe.

  14. 130 light years is “close”. 130 MILLION is 6 orders of magnitude farther, though admittedly 2 orders of magnitude below the limit of the observable universe.

  25. Thanks for reminding of the site, haven’t been there in a couple years, currently downloading wallpapers

  26. Thanks for reminding of the site, haven’t been there in a couple years, currently downloading wallpapers

Comments are closed.