Now, the simulations reveal the middle step of the process—how the merging stars' magnetic field organizes itself into outwardly directed components capable of forming a jet. The Damiana supercomputer at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics needed six weeks to reveal the details of a process that unfolds in just 35 thousandths of a second—less than the blink of an eye.
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These structures, called magnetospheres, interact as the city-sized stars enter their final orbits. Magnetic field lines can connect both stars, break, and reconnect, while currents surge through surrounding plasma moving at nearly the speed of light. The simulations show that these systems may produce X-rays and gamma rays that future observatories should be able to detect. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight CenterAlt text: Narrated video introducing simulations of merging neutron star magnetospheresMusic: “A Theory Develops,” Pip Heywood [PRS], Universal Production MusicWatch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.Complete transcript available. || NS_Binary_Sim_Still.jpg (5760x3240) [1.4 MB] || NS_Binary_Sim_Still_searchweb.png (320x180) [67.6 KB] || NS_Binary_Sim_Still_thm.png (80x40) [5.2 KB] || 14884_NeutronStarBinarySim2_good.mp4 (1920x1080) [220.4 MB] || 14884_NeutronStarBinarySim2_best.mp4 (1920x1080) [363.9 MB] || NeutronStarBinarySimulationCaptions.en_US.srt [2.4 KB] || NeutronStarBinarySimulationCaptions.en_US.vtt [2.2 KB] || 14884_NeutronStarBinarySim2_ProRes_1920x1080_2997.mov (1920x1080) [1.7 GB] || ", "release_date": "2026-01-29T11:00:00-05:00", "update_date": "2026-01-22T10:17:05.309486-05:00", "main_image": { "id": 1159928, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a014800/a014884/NS_Binary_Sim_Still_searchweb.png", "filename": "NS_Binary_Sim_Still_searchweb.png", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "New supercomputer simulations explore the tangled magnetic structures around merging neutron stars. These structures, called magnetospheres, interact as the city-sized stars enter their final orbits. Magnetic field lines can connect both stars, break, and reconnect, while currents surge through surrounding plasma moving at nearly the speed of light. The simulations show that these systems may produce X-rays and gamma rays that future observatories should be able to detect. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight CenterAlt text: Narrated video introducing simulations of merging neutron star magnetospheresMusic: “A Theory Develops,” Pip Heywood [PRS], Universal Production MusicWatch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.Complete transcript available.", "width": 320, "height": 180, "pixels": 57600 } }, { "id": 14209, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14209/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "NASA’s Compton Mission Glimpses Supersized Neutron Stars", "description": "This simulation tracks the gravitational wave and density changes as two orbiting neutron stars crash together. Dark purple colors represent the lowest densities, while yellow-white shows the highest. An audible tone and a visual frequency scale (at left) track the steady rise in the frequency of gravitational waves as the neutron stars close. When the objects merge at 42 seconds, the gravitational waves suddenly jump to frequencies of thousands of hertz and bounce between two primary tones (quasiperiodic oscillations, or QPOs). The presence of these signals in such simulations led to the search and discovery of similar phenomena in the light emitted by short gamma-ray bursts.Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and STAG Research Centre/Peter HammondComplete transcript available.Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.Visual description:On a black background with a faint gray grid, two multicolored blobs representing merging neutron stars circle and close. The colors indicate density. Yellow-white indicates the highest densities, at the centers of the objects. The colors change to orange and red at their periphery, with purple colors representing matter torn from and swirling with the neutron stars as they orbit. The grid shrinks as the camera pulls back to capture a wider view of the merger. A pale orange display at left shows the changing frequency of the gravitational waves generated, which is also indicated by the rising tone. As the merger occurs, the screen shows a spinning yellow blob at center immersed in a large cloud of magneta and purple debris. || Merger_Simulation_Annotated_Still_2.jpg (1920x1080) [180.7 KB] || 14209_Hypermassive_QPO_Simulation_Zoom_YOUTUBE_1080.webm (1920x1080) [12.1 MB] || 14209_Hypermassive_QPO_Simulation_Zoom_YOUTUBE_1080.mp4 (1920x1080) [129.3 MB] || 14209_Hypermassive_QPO_Simulation_Zoom_YOUTUBE_BEST_1080.mp4 (1920x1080) [161.8 MB] || 14209_NS_Merger_QPO_SRT_Captions.en_US.srt [1.6 KB] || 14209_NS_Merger_QPO_SRT_Captions.en_US.vtt [1.6 KB] || 14209_Hypermassive_QPO_Simulation_Zoom_YOUTUBE_ProRes_1920x1080_2997.mov (1920x1080) [1.0 GB] || ", "release_date": "2023-01-09T17:10:00-05:00", "update_date": "2025-01-12T23:16:27.064142-05:00", "main_image": { "id": 369404, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a014200/a014209/Merger_Simulation_Still_1_print.jpg", "filename": "Merger_Simulation_Still_1_print.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "Full version of the simulation above, but without labels or other annotations.Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and STAG Research Centre/Peter HammondComplete transcript available.", "width": 1024, "height": 576, "pixels": 589824 } }, { "id": 11530, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11530/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "Neutron Stars Rip Each Other Apart to Form Black Hole", "description": "This supercomputer simulation shows one of the most violent events in the universe: a pair of neutron stars colliding, merging and forming a black hole. A neutron star is the compressed core left behind when a star born with between eight and 30 times the sun's mass explodes as a supernova. Neutron stars pack about 1.5 times the mass of the sun — equivalent to about half a million Earths — into a ball just 12 miles (20 km) across. As the simulation begins, we view an unequally matched pair of neutron stars weighing 1.4 and 1.7 solar masses. They are separated by only about 11 miles, slightly less distance than their own diameters. Redder colors show regions of progressively lower density. As the stars spiral toward each other, intense tides begin to deform them, possibly cracking their crusts. Neutron stars possess incredible density, but their surfaces are comparatively thin, with densities about a million times greater than gold. Their interiors crush matter to a much greater degree densities rise by 100 million times in their centers. To begin to imagine such mind-boggling densities, consider that a cubic centimeter of neutron star matter outweighs Mount Everest. By 7 milliseconds, tidal forces overwhelm and shatter the lesser star. Its superdense contents erupt into the system and curl a spiral arm of incredibly hot material. At 13 milliseconds, the more massive star has accumulated too much mass to support it against gravity and collapses, and a new black hole is born. The black hole's event horizon — its point of no return — is shown by the gray sphere. While most of the matter from both neutron stars will fall into the black hole, some of the less dense, faster moving matter manages to orbit around it, quickly forming a large and rapidly rotating torus. This torus extends for about 124 miles (200 km) and contains the equivalent of 1/5th the mass of our sun. The entire simulation covers only 20 milliseconds.Scientists think neutron star mergers like this produce short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Short GRBs last less than two seconds yet unleash as much energy as all the stars in our galaxy produce over one year. The rapidly fading afterglow of these explosions presents a challenge to astronomers. A key element in understanding GRBs is getting instruments on large ground-based telescopes to capture afterglows as soon as possible after the burst. The rapid notification and accurate positions provided by NASA's Swift mission creates a vibrant synergy with ground-based observatories that has led to dramatically improved understanding of GRBs, especially for short bursts. || ", "release_date": "2014-05-13T10:00:00-04:00", "update_date": "2024-08-14T22:44:52.133586-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 455853, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011500/a011530/NS_Merger_Frame_200_1080.jpg", "filename": "NS_Merger_Frame_200_1080.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "Edited video with music of the 4k neutron star merger simulation.Credit: NASA/AEI/ZIB/M. Koppitz and L. RezzollaMusic: \"Approaching Eclipse\" from stock music site Killer TracksWatch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.For complete transcript, click here.", "width": 1920, "height": 1080, "pixels": 2073600 } }, { "id": 10947, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10947/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "Crash And Burst", "description": "Imagine a dead star the size of a city and with more mass than our sun. Now imagine two of these ultra-heavy spheres smashing into each other, generating a blast bright enough to outshine an entire galaxy. Scientists have recreated just that using supercomputers to model what happens during the collision of two neutron stars. The entire process unfolds in just 35 thousandths of a second, but what this new analysis reveals is how the tangled magnetic field lines of the collapsed neutron stars restructure around a black hole, focusing a narrow stream of particles that jet into space at 99.995 percent the speed of light. Scientists believe events like this are one source of gamma-ray bursts, the powerful flashes of light from beyond the Milky Way that were first detected by satellites in the late 1960s. Watch the visualization below to see this lightning-fast cosmic wreck evolve in super-slow motion. || ", "release_date": "2012-04-03T00:00:00-04:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:53:09.782995-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 477175, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a010900/a010947/COVER_1024x576.jpg", "filename": "COVER_1024x576.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "Two neutron stars collide in one very big bang.", "width": 1024, "height": 576, "pixels": 589824 } } ], "sources": [], "products": [], "newer_versions": [], "older_versions": [], "alternate_versions": [] }