Gravitational waves and new clues from space reveal new way to make a black hole

For the first time, scientists worldwide and at Penn State University have detected both gravitational waves and light shooting toward our planet from one massively powerful event in space -- the birth of a new black hole created by the merger of two neutron stars. This detection is important because it marks the beginning of a new era of "multi-messenger" as well as "multi-wavelength" space exploration -- an era when gravitational-wave detectors are triggering a global network of other types of instruments to focus their special detection powers simultaneously on one fleetingly explosive point in space.

All the previous gravitational-wave detections since the first in September 2015 had been the result of two merging black holes -- objects much more massive than a neutron star -- which have left only gravitational waves as fleeting clues of their merger. "The evidence that these new gravitational waves are from merging neutron stars has been captured, for the first time, by observatories on Earth and in orbit that detect electromagnetic radiation, including visible light and other wavelengths," said Chad Hanna, assistant professor of physics and of astronomy & astrophysics and Freed Early Career Professor at Penn State.
NASA's Swift, Hubble, Chandra and Spitzer missions, along with dozens of ground-based observatories, later captured the fading glow of the blast's expanding debris. Numerous scientific papers describing and interpreting these new observations are being published inScienceNaturePhysical Review Letters andThe Astrophysical Journal.
Penn State scientists are leaders in the development and operation of NASA's Swift Gamma Ray Burst Explorer satellite. Two of Swift's three instruments were built with Penn State leadership, and Penn State continues to lead Swift's Mission Operations Center, which is located on the University Park Campus. "Swift's rapid response time enabled us to use it to rapidly search for and detect the electromagnetic counterpart of this gamma-ray burst after its detection by LIGO," said Jamie Kennea, associate research professor of astronomy and astrophysics, the leader of the Swift Science Operations Team at Swift's Mission Operations Center, located at Penn State's University Park campus.

"We saw ultraviolet light resulting from this gravitational-wave event as part of Swift observations of almost 750 different locations in the sky. Then, as this light rapidly faded from view, we intensely observed it with Swift's ultraviolet/optical telescope, the UVOT," Kennea said. "Because ultraviolet light from objects in space can be detected only by telescopes located outside Earth's atmosphere, Swift's UVOT telescope provided unique data on this event. These new data now present new questions for theorists to solve."
Gravitational waves and new clues from space reveal new way to make a black hole Gravitational waves and new clues from space reveal new way to make a black hole Reviewed by Doctor Smile on October 16, 2017 Rating: 5

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