A Black Hole Devours a Neutron Star, Sending Ripples Through Space and Time

Ragh last month astronomers identified the signal of gravitational waves from an occurrence that took place 900 million years ago when a black hole ate a neutron star. This appears to be the first time such a happening can be observed. Observed by LIGO and Virgo, the signal could help scientists know how binaries in black holes and neutron star work. According to the scientists, the black hole ingested the neutron star without formation of any radiation. And if true, this detection will mark this decade’s major cosmic findings like gravitational waves and neutron star mergers.

European and American observatories recorded different space-time vibrations from one that occurred 8,550 million trillion km from our planet. Scientists are still trying to understand it in order to establish the dimensions of the two objects, but it is believed that the event was of involve; a black hole devouring a neutron star.

A black hole may have snuffed out a dense star called a neutron star the moment around 900 million years ago, according to Scott Susan from the General Relativity Theory and Data Analysis Group of the Australian National University. The ANU SkyMapper Telescope was used to survey the suspected area of the event, however no signs of evidence where seen.

There are two types of stellar remnants; black holes are one of them while the other is neutron stars. Neutron stars and though, they’re as small as cities, such as Chicago, these are denser than the sun. When giants die, they turn into black holes — regions in space with such intense gravity that nothing, not even light, can break its pull.

This, if proven to be true, could mean a discovery of black holes and neutron star in binary pairing with each other and orbiting towards collision. If the mass of neutron star was comparable to the black hole, then astronomers would expect more orbits and electromagnetic signals. Nonetheless, they found that the absence of radiation indicate that the neutron star was likely consumed whole.

It is therefore desirable that astronomers are able to establish the masses of the objects. Black holes consist of above five solar mass while neutron stars are below three solar mass. In fact, there exists a possibility that, the small object might be an extremely light black hole and this is even more surprising an observation.

“Certainly, there’s no recorded black hole with a mass less than five times that of the sun,” added Scott. “If this is the truth, would give rise to new queries on how such small black hole exists. ”

Confirmation of this event would give finality and conclude a number of big discoveries such as gravitational waves and neutron stars collisions of the last decade. Those are the ripples in space and time the likes of neutron star mergers that also create light and heavy elements.

In early this year, the gravitational wave detectors were turned on again and with them, astronomers could possibly get a neutron star-black hole coalescence, a neutron star merger, as well as three black hole mergers. The said events are still being fromative.

Should these findings be true then future researches will have a clue on how frequent the system is and how it develops. “We also hope to see a close supernova”, Scott also noted, “which would enable us to detect the gravitational waves developed in the process and in turn get a better understanding of the supernova process. ”

Teams are also also developing methods of signaling other larger neutron star that is formed when neutron star collide. Such detection could even if only for a brief period provide much insight to the collisions of neutron stars, and their internal make-up.

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