Astronomers have recently witnessed a black hole swallow a neutron star for the first time in recorded history.
Astronomers have recently discovered evidence of a black hole swallowing a neutron star, the densest object in the known universe!
Ten days later, the exact same event was seen on the opposite side of the universe.
Astronomers witnessed the last 500 orbits before the big stars were swallowed whole by the black giant, in a process that happened in far less than a minute. Wowzers!
Even more impressive, is that the stunning process briefly generated as much energy as all the visible light in the observable universe.
A neutron star is apparently the most dense thing in the universe, I doubt the physicists know of Scott Morrison but I say he is denser
— Snarky Mc Snark (@rorybaust) June 29, 2021
Study co-author and astrophysicist at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee expressed his awe at the natural event: “It was just a big quick gulp, gone!”.
He went on to describe that the black hole got “a nice dinner of a neutron star and (made) itself just a little bit more massive.”
Muse would be impressed. Amused, even. Ha!
The brilliant event was foreshadowed by bursts of energy which were discovered when detectors on Earth, particularly from the US and Europe, spotted the merger’s gravitational waves, cosmic energy ripples flying through space and time – exactly as Albert Einstein described!
Each of these ripples came from more than 1 billion light-years away!
Sometimes, I feel my soul is a neutron star being eaten up by a black hole.
— Pat Lanciano (@patlanciano) June 29, 2021
In fact, it’s such a large-scale event that the waves were first detected over a year ago, back in January 2020.
However, the study analysing and interpreting the data by over 100 scientists was only finally published on Tuesday in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Astronomers say that the collision of two black holes and the collision of two neutron stars have each been witnessed before.
However, this is the first time a collision between a black hole and a neutron star has been witnessed by mankind… ever.
Scientists believe that there should be many of these events occurring, but we are yet to discover one in our own galaxy.
