Astronomers Strike Gravitational Gold In Colliding Neutron Stars (npr.org) 109
For the first time, scientists have caught two neutron stars in the act of colliding, revealing that these strange smash-ups are the source of heavy elements such as gold and platinum. From a report: The discovery, announced today at a news conference and in scientific reports written by some 3,500 researchers, solves a long-standing mystery about the origin of these heavy elements -- which are found in everything from wedding rings to cellphones to nuclear weapons. It's also a dramatic demonstration of how astrophysics is being transformed by humanity's newfound ability to detect gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space-time that are created when massive objects spin around each other and finally collide. "It's so beautiful. It's so beautiful it makes me want to cry. It's the fulfillment of dozens, hundreds, thousands of people's efforts, but it's also the fulfillment of an idea suddenly becoming real," says Peter Saulson of Syracuse University, who has spent more than three decades working on the detection of gravitational waves. Albert Einstein predicted the existence of these ripples more than a century ago, but scientists didn't manage to detect them until 2015. Until now, they'd made only four such detections, and each time the distortions in space-time were caused by the collision of two black holes. That bizarre phenomenon, however, can't normally be seen by telescopes that look for light. Neutron stars, by contrast, spew out visible cosmic fireworks when they come together. These incredibly dense stars are as small as cities like New York and yet have more mass than our sun. Further reading: 'A New Rosetta Stone for Astronomy' (The Atlantic), and Gravitational Wave Astronomers Hit Mother Lode (Scientific American).
It's like Louis Pasteur said: (Score:5, Informative)
"Chance favors the prepared mind."
This is an example of that at it's purest, the culmination of years of effort by hundreds of people, all for a moment that might not have happened in their lifetimes.
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"Luck Is What Happens When Preparation Meets Opportunity" - Seneca
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THE Seneca?
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Logic would dictate, then, that theft is property!!
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... rather than becoming a slave to the things you own?
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Since 'things' lack a way to physically force you into anything, being a slave to your own things is ultimately the choice of the individual. Not so with other people, who CAN force you against your will.
And even of weak-willed people, most would still prefer to be a slave of their own things, than to slave for another (or their things). I would agree that, given those two options, me too, would rather prefer the first instead of the latter.
And so would you.
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Right. Definitely not a feature of any other economic system, that last bit.
Re:It's like Louis Pasteur said: (Score:5, Insightful)
Because if all the basic research ever funded by governments had been funneled into disaster relief, well boy, we'd sure be better off today...
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Indeed!
Just imagine all the research-money that went in the development of antibiotics would have spend on emergency aid when a disaster took place, we would have saved thgousands more!
Yes, it would also mean millions more would have died from diseases, but let's not use ratio and logic to make a statement. The parent poster sure didn't.
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"Don't forget about the billions of taxpayer dollars that could have gone to places like Puerto Rico or Houston TX. "
If you're so concerned go there and help out yourself you pathetic poseur.
Re:It's like Louis Pasteur said: (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd argue that the thing that really separates our society from all other advanced civilizations in the past is our unique mastery of chemistry. The Romans were extremely good at engineering, and over the course of a thousand years developed some excellent recipes for materials like steel and concrete; but they had no idea what they were doing on a fundamental level; they were stumbling along blindly through stubborn trial and error.
The significance of chemistry is often overlooked by geeks; physics, math and computer science have more geek cachet. But if you look around, nothing shapes our world more. And the thing is, chemistry only became chemistry when it turned away from the practical concern of creating gold to the impractical one of understanding the universe.
If, like many people, you need an analogy to understand this, think of science as like going to the gym. The things you do in the gym are pointless; what gets you through them initially is the useful strength you hope to take away from the gym. But that never sustains anyone for long. The people who obtain the benefits of the gym are the ones who end up doing it for its own sake.
A society that does not pursue science for its own sake is inherently weak. It could not respond to a challenge like Puerto Rico if it wanted to. And it certainly has no power to withstand a more advanced society.
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I tend to agree. I think the advancements in materials science were huge factors, but much of that is related to chemistry anyway. Although math was critical to build structures that didn't fall down.
Re:It's like Louis Pasteur said: (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't forget the key role chemistry played in developing electrical technologies.
Both Faraday and Volta were chemists; Faraday started his career as an assistant in Humphrey Davies' lab, where he discovered benzene and explored the synthesis of chlorine compounds. His electromagnetism work stemmed from experiments with constructing voltaic piles (electric batteries), devices which had no practical application yet. Absent the idle curiosity inspired by making severed frog legs twitch or transforming water into volatile gasses, nobody would ever have gained the understanding electricity and magnetism they needed to develop electric motors and generators.
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Brewers, cheese makers, ham curers, cloth dyers and brewers might disagree with that.
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So they were using trial and error, but it wasn't science? In any case, your premise that there was no chemistry except for whatever lofty purpose you claimed is bollocks.
What I find interesting is that there are contemporary accounts from the 15th century describing the different colours worn by noble's retainers. Funny that, if dyes weren't invented until centuries later. Wouldn't they all be off-white?
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So they were using trial and error, but it wasn't science?
Exactly correct. Trial and error is an essential part of science, but it is not in itself science. Just as developing explanations for an observation is part of science, but is not science in and of itself -- something a lot of people here would do well to learn.
In any case, your premise that there was no chemistry except for whatever lofty purpose you claimed is bollocks.
Well it depends on what you mean. Humans are the product of evolution; evolution is mediated by chemical processes, so in a sense "chemistry" pre-dates the emergence of humans. But we're not talking about "chemistry" in that sense; we are talkin
intermittent, intergalatic GPS (Score:2)
You get real chemistry as soon as you're clever enough to construct Antonie van Leeuwenhoek's simple microscope.
The Greek
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Wow, that is why I never go to the gym. Chemistry.
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One of my favourite Feynman quotes fits nicely: "Physics is like sex: it sometimes produces practical results, but that's not why we do it."
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Don't forget about the billions of taxpayer dollars that could have gone to places like Puerto Rico or Houston TX. The homeless poor should get credit for their sacrifices in this endeavor as well.
As opposed to the 50% of the discretionary budget [politifact.com] that goes to fund a military that consumes over 1/3 of world military spending [wikipedia.org]?
Created a black hole? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Created a black hole? (Score:5, Informative)
This came up in the press conference, and at present they can't say either way. The merger product could be among the most massive neutron stars or lightest black holes.
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A neutron star doesn't radiate in the visible spectrum either, and whether the remnant of this collision is a black hole or neutron star, there's going to be a shitload of gamma rays and x rays given off.
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If there is visible light we can be certain that it wasn't a black hole that was formed. Most likely either a complete detonation or a larger neutron star.
The visible light doesn't come from the remnant, it comes from the glowing cloud of vapor that's the ejecta from the collision.
Actually, black holes are some of the most brightly visible objects in the universe: quasars. You don't see the black hole itself, but the accretion disk of all the stuff being heated into incandescence in the process of being swallowed radiates spectacularly.
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If there is visible light we can be certain that it wasn't a black hole that was formed.
Not true. The radius of a neutron star is roughly twice its Schwarzschild radius (the radius of the event horizon of a black hole of the same mass), so in a collision resulting in a black hole, 7/8 of the mass would initially be outside the event horizon. Much of that would likely fall in, but much of it would also likely be blown away by the force of the collision.
Keep in mind that the amount of energy released in a collision like this is big. Like really really big. Even a regular supernova is big.
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Even Einstein didn't know about that.
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Is it yuuuuge?
Non-standard measurement units (Score:2)
Please use standard units! How many football fields is that?
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About 102100,84 football fields.
Thought this might be the big ESO announcment (Score:1)
http://www.eso.org/public/anno... [eso.org]
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LOL. Every scientific announcement uses that exactly that kind of wording. BTW, here's the press release in question:https://www.eso.org/public/announcements/ann17075/
Gold is created how? (Score:2)
I thought gold was just created the same as everything else heavier than iron, in a supernova. So a quick google shows that colliding neutron stars would provide a new mechanism but it doesn't discount the old mechanism https://www.smithsonianmag.com... [smithsonianmag.com]
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I'm wondering... Does anyone ever believe the nonsense you're writing?
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The section of the Wikipedia article on supernova nucleosynthesis about the r-process [wikipedia.org] and the article on the r-process itself have a version of the periodic table showing the origin of each element.
It shows merging neutron stars as the main source of gold, platinum, iodine and others, and the only source of bismuth, thorium and uranium.
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Woah, my knowledge was really out of date there!
Table with main origins of elements
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
S process (Score:3)
I learned quite a bit about nucleosynthesis, but haven't revisited it in decades.
There are three main processes for synthesizing heavy elements. In the s-process [wikipedia.org] (slow), neutrons are absorbed by heavy nuclei slowly enough that the nucleus has time to beta decay, if it is too neutron rich to be stable. The s-process happens in red giant stars, and the products can be released by stellar winds and planetary nebula formation.
In the r-process [wikipedia.org] (rapid), neutrons are added very quickly to heavy nuclei, which absor
Confusing summary, article explains better (Score:2)
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The findings support another prediction that neutron-star collisions produce chemical elements heavier than iron, like gold and platinum. Astronomers believe neutrons released during the merger combine with surrounding atoms in a phenomenon known as r-process nucleosynthesis. Telescope observations of GW170817’s spectra—the chemical composition of the star material—revealed it contained heavy elements, including 10 times the mass of the Earth in gold, according to O’Shaughnessy. These kinds of collisions, astronomers believe, may be responsible for populating the universe with heavy elements.
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"The Atlantic article even has an image."
Kerry-Lee from Hull, Daily Mail, p. 3 , showed how two large orbs made her some gold.
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Kerry-Lee from Hull, Daily Mail, p. 3 , showed how two large orbs made her some gold.
All you need to do now is detect her gravitational waves.
Source (Score:1)
The Doctor may be a doctor but not the only doctor (Score:2)
A source, not the source. Kind of like how The Doctor from Doctor Who may be a Doctor but not the only doctor.
I'm not even sure he even is a doctor. Where did he get his Ph.D. from? Does Gallifrey even have Ph.D. granting institutions? He's sure not a M.D.-- what's his doctorate in, exactly?
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He has - or claims he has - a medical degree from the University of Glasgow.
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Of course, to quote River Song, "The Doctor lies."
Not really "found" there, those elements (Score:2)
which are found in everything from wedding rings to cellphones to nuclear weapons.
No, they're found in the ground. They're taken out of the ground and put in those other things.
All gold is gravitational if you like (Score:2)
It's pretty heavy stuff.
Naive questions (Score:2)
With an optical telescope, you just point it at the thing in the sky you want to watch. With a radio telescope, you get a much bigger collector than an optical lens, and you also point it in the sky at the thing you want to watch. I'm not quite sure how you know exactly what you're looking at with a radio telescope, particularly if the thing you're observing is not visible optically, but I can make a guess.
But my question is, this neutron star collision was detected by the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave
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But my question is, this neutron star collision was detected by the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave interferometers, which don't even point at anything. Do they find the location of the source of the wave by comparing its arrival at different sites, then somehow computing a physical location that must be the origin? Wouldn't you need several of these devices to pinpoint that source accurately? Finally, how do they know that the g wave they observed corresponds with neutron stars colliding, and not any of a variety of other kinds of events?
The time delays between the three observatories are the main way to determine the source of a gravitational wave. More detectors allows for better localizing, with three being the minimum for a decent triangulation. But, there are other properties of the waves that can be used.
Here's a good explanation: https://profmattstrassler.com/... [profmattstrassler.com]
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I love reading net kooks. So fundamentally ignorant, and yet so absolutely certain of their genius.
ether, if it exists, is completely unobservable (Score:5, Informative)
You're right that if Einstein hadn't come up with it, special relativity could have been derived from the mathematical insights provided by Hendrik Lorentz and Henri Poincaré, but they hadn't yet quite put it all together into the single elegant package Einstein did.
You're off target about pretty much everything else, though. The Michelson-Morley experiment was only the first of many, many experiments that validate special relativity-- with today's measurement technologies that can measure the speed of light directly, there is no need to go to all the trouble Michelson and Morley did to do interferometry. There isn't any way to incorporate ether into today's extensive array of experimental results other than "luminiferous ether, if it exists, is completely unobservable."
Most optical gyroscopes use fibers these days, and don't deal with the speed of light in vacuum at all, although you can do it with ring laser gyroscopes... which obey special relativity.
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There isn't any way to incorporate ether into today's extensive array of experimental results other than "luminiferous ether, if it exists, is completely unobservable."
It sounds like you just found Dark Matter! ;)
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Morley didn't discover shit, he plagiarized from predecessors, who plagiarized from predecessors as well, ad infinitum. If anyone, It should be Plato who should be honoured as the first one who coherently wrote about the universe.
Have you even read the actual (non-dumbed down/reduced) Symposium? Have you read any his works at all? Are you aware his Aesthetics theory was never at odds with relativity, nor with Maxwell field equations, nor Morleys' experiments?
Face it, you're speaking out of your ass and have
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It's equally sad to see you engage in platitudes.
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And thus, sadness continues...
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Couldn't we all?
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Matthew 7:3.
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You mean Schwarzschild.
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Sad...
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:~(
Not wrong, just unobservable (Score:3)
Did you just Google all this shit an Wikipedia and jot down your failed interpretation?
No, actually I did it the hard way, by earning a Ph.D. in physics.
It's not that what you are saying is wrong, it's more that you mix together correct statements with dubious statements, ignore most of modern physics experimental results, and then go on to make unorthodox and mostly-unsupported assertions. The point you should take away is that critiquing the 130-year-old Michelson-Morley experiments is mostly irrelevant; there are much better and much more recent experimental confirmations of special relati
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