Atronomers & astrophysicists once again are excited; this time at the discovery of what appears to be two super dense neutron stars colliding. Such collsions may also create Black Holes
Dr Edo Berger’s and his team at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics studied the radiation and spectra emating from GRB (gamma ray burst) designated GRB 130603B which was detected by NASA’s Swift satellite on June 3, 2013. This GRB lies at a distance of 3.9 billion light-years from Earth and is one of the nearest GRB events seen to date.
GRB 130603B observations provide evidence that it resulted from the collision of two neutron stars. Moreover, a unique glow that persisted for days at the GRB location potentially signifies the creation of substantial amounts of heavy elements, including gold.
The amount of gold created in this event could be perhaps 10 times the moon’s mass in gold, Berger said. The gold out there could be worth around $10 octillion. (That’s $100 trillion squared). A cool piece of ‘Black Hole’ bling 😉
The scientists have calculated that about one-hundredth of a solar mass of material was ejected by the gamma-ray burst, some of which was gold.
All the gold on earth and in the cosmos might have come from such gamma-ray bursts.
The burst coming from the collision of two neutron stars — each roughly the size of a medium sized city and filled with 1.5 times the mass of the sun — an impact that produced a black hole and the lethal(if close by) incredibly intense bright burst of gamma rays that was picked up by the Swift Satellite
“To paraphrase Carl Sagan, we are all star stuff, and our jewelry is colliding-star stuff,” Dr Berger concluded 🙂
Gold Giving Gamma-Ray Burst -GRB 130603B Below is a fun & informative guide for the creation of the yearned for yellow metal- by Ben Gilliland
Astronomers & physicists have been getting excited about possibly the once in a lifetime event of seeing material being digested by a very dark denizen of deep space namely a black hole. Normal (if such can be said!). Black Holes are basically formed when a massive star- dozens of times the size of our sun die and explode as a supernova(the biggest explosion in space/nature known after the Big Bang).
The remnants of the dying star then collapse inward building up immense pressure at the core of the dead star the atoms of the gas etc that fall to core become super squashed and becomes composed sub atomic neutron Such stars are composed almost entirely of neutrons, which are subatomic particles without net positive or negative charge(neutral). Even a spoonful of neutron star material weighs many thousands of tons.
If the supernova results from an even larger dying star, the material collapsing in on itself is even heavier, and the result is the incredible black hole.
A Black Hole allows no mater even light to escape from it’s lethal gravitational pull. Passing matter (such as gas dust etc.,) that is unfortunate to get too close begins to fall into the Black Hole. The matter spirals in becoming elongated and as it gets closer has it’s atoms stripped to sub atomic size, some particles are lucky to be flung back out into space as high energy X rays, the other particles fall in the Black Hole and are lost forever.
The super massive Black Holes in the centre of most galaxies are thought to have formed by a number of Black Holes being created and merging soon after the galaxy was formed with structures such as the galactic spiral arms which began to rotate around it’s dark heart. The gas cloud is being stretched out by the gravity of our own galaxy’s central Black Hole.
The giant gas cloud heading for the black hole at the centre of our galaxy has begun its death spiral.
The cloud, known as G2 is now being stretched out like a piece of spaghetti by the black hole’s extreme gravity.
This gravitational field has caused the head of the cloud to accelerate around the black hole and to speed back towards us.
Astronomers have been closely observing G2, hoping to catch it being ripped apart and eaten by the black hole.
Black Holes are incredibly dense objects with gravity strong enough to trap even light
A ‘medium’ black hole could have the mass of 1,000 Suns but be no bigger than Earth
Supermassive black holes are thought to be at the centre of most large galaxies – including ours
The cloud of gas – three times larger than Pluto’s orbit but with a total mass just three times that of the Earth – was first spotted on its course toward the galaxy’s centre in 2011.
The mass of the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way is estimated to be four million times that of the Sun and is formally known as Sagittarius A (Sgr A*). It is the closest known “supermassive” black hole and is therefore considered the best places to study these dense objects in detail.
“The most exciting thing we now see in the new observations is the head of the cloud coming back towards us at more than 10 million km/h along the orbit – about 1% of the speed of light,” said Reinhard Genzel, from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany.
“This means that the front end of the cloud has already made its closest approach to the black hole.”
The origin of the gas cloud remains unclear, although a variety of ideas have been proposed.
These range from its recent formation due to a collision between stellar winds and the interstellar medium to its origins as a jet emerging from the galactic centre to a faint star that is losing increasing amounts of gas.
Image showing the gas cloud falling into our galactic centred Black Hole. The head(top) of the cloud is now travelling much faster than the tail
The new observations argue against the cloud possessing a stellar core that would constantly be supplying new gas.
“We see that the cloud is now being stretched so much that it resembles spaghetti. This means that it probably doesn’t have a star in it,” said Stefan Gillessen, also from the Max Planck Institute, who has been leading the observing team.
“At the moment we think that the gas probably came from the stars we see orbiting the black hole.”
Due to the tidal forces stretching G2, the front of the cloud is now moving about 500 km/s faster than its tail.
The astronomers have been using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile to study G2.
As the gas cloud is stretched its light gets harder to see. But by staring at the region close to the black hole for more than 20 hours of total exposure time with the VLT’s Sinfoni instrument, the team was able to measure the velocities of different parts of the cloud as it streaked past the central black hole.
Image showing the gas cloud falling into our galactic centred Black Hole. The head(top) of the cloud is now travelling much faster than the tail