• Virgo: In the guts of the laboratory capable of 'hunting' a gravitational wave a week
  • Interview: The Nobel who detected the gravitational waves: 'It was not an eureka moment, I felt panic'
  • 2010-2019: A new window to the cosmos: from hunting for exoplanets to the first gravitational waves

Two years ago, the astronomy of multi-messengers was born: On August 17, 2017, two neutron stars (what very massive stars become when their fuel runs out at the end of their life) merged and the signal resulting from that phenomenon that had place at 130 million light years was observed in different ways, from different places and with different scientific instruments.

That phenomenon (called GW170817) was felt on Earth: the gravitational waves generated in that cosmic event were detected by the instruments of the LIGO (US) and Virgo (Italy) laboratories, specifically designed to locate those disturbances in space-time that they occur in very violent events of the cosmos - such as mergers of two black holes or two neutron stars - and which were predicted by Albert Einstein in his Theory of General Relativity of 1915.

On the other hand, the Fermi space telescope detected the gamma-ray burst that resulted from that crash and the Chavenir Observatory observed it in X-rays

Elsewhere in the world, scientists studied the same fusion of neutron stars across the electromagnetic spectrum - ultraviolet, infrared, visible light ... - and confirmed the theory that both gold and gold are generated during collisions of two neutron stars. other metals

Multi-messenger astronomy consists, therefore, in observing the same signal in different ways , since the information it contains has different faces for scientists: it can contain electromagnetic radiation, gravitational waves or subatomic particles.

This Monday, coinciding with the congress that the American Astronomical Society celebrates in Honolulu (Hawaii), scientists from the LIGO-Virgo collaboration have confirmed the second detection of gravitational waves from the fusion of two neutron stars. The phenomenon, baptized as GW190425 and located 500 million light years, was detected on April 26 but it has taken several months to study its nature.

And despite this, as admitted by the researcher at the University of Valencia José Antonio Font, " it is not completely ruled out that it could be a fusion of a neutron star and a black hole , or even a fusion of two black holes."

Not because it is the second detection of this type of gravitational waves, it is less relevant because, as this Font notes points out, "its interest lies in the fact that it is the system with the highest total mass of the binary systems that have been observed (without colliding) in our galaxy, which is very important because it opens up new questions about the possible formation channels of these massive systems. "

And as explained in a statement Thomas Dent, coordinator of the LIGO IGFAE-GW group in Santiago de Compostela, "although the first fusion of neutron stars detected by LIGO-Virgo (GW170817) was a surprise due to its proximity to to the Solar System and its bright emission in visible light, the second detection, GW190425, is more mysterious because of its high total mass , which does not match the binary systems of neutron stars detected by radio-telescopes in our galaxy "and is much higher than expected in this type of violent events.

Its total mass, of around 3.4 solar masses, is greater than that of any known neutron star binary system, and this, according to Jo van den Brand, spokesperson for the Virgo Collaboration, "has interesting astrophysical implications on the formation of this system. "

"On this day as marked as the day of Kings we have the new pleasure of announcing a new detection and marking the beginning of a very special new year for us," said Alicia Sintes, coordinator of the LIGO group at the University of the Islands Balearics. "Nature never ceases to amaze us and the LIGO-Virgo observatories work together to reveal the mysteries of the Universe," he adds.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Science and Health
  • science

Climate crisis The true heroes of climate change

Climate Crisis Madrid Climate Weather: "Life will continue on Earth when we humans are not"

EspacioTrump achieves that the US Army has a Space Force in the Army