What the Rumored Neutron Star Merger Might Teach Us - Facts So Romantic
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In a sense, neutron star mergers are the largest hadron colliders ever conceived.Image by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / FlickrThis month, before LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, and its European counterpart Virgo, were going to close down for a year to undergo upgrades, they jointly surveyed the skies. It was a small observational window—the 1st to the 25th—but that may have been enough: A rumor that LIGO has detected another gravitational wave—the fourth in two years—is making the rounds. But this time, there’s a twist: The signal might have been caused by the merger of two neutron stars instead of black holes. If the rumor holds true, it would be an astonishingly lucky detection. To get a sense of the moment, Nautilus spoke to David Radice, a (...)