[slate]
So first part of this
discovery comes from the LIGO observatory which for the first
time detected gravitational waves, ripples in space-time
from two colliding neutron stars
And if that wasn't enough just two seconds later
with the Fermi Gamma Ray space Telescope we detected
a short bright flash of high energy light that we call a gamma ray
burst. This alerted the entire astronomical community
to the fact that something very exciting was happening and over
70 telescopes from around the world. searched for a counterpart
in other wavelengths. They were able to identify the host galaxy and
study the remains of this explosion in amazing details.
[slate]
That's exactly what I'm saying. For the first time we could actually
weigh the amount of heavy metals that were formed in one of these
systems. Over two hundred times the weight of the Earth.
was formed in gold and platinum following the merger of these
systems. They were thrown out at very high speeds and dispersed throughout
the universe and eventually they were formed as
stars and planets like Earth.
[slate] So Fermi and other
NASA satellites quite often detect what we call gamma ray bursts, very
short high energy flashes. Gamma ray
radiation. Several dozen times a year at least. What
makes this really amazing is that you're actually able to see
the source that powered this gamma ray emission
from gravitational waves. We could link the merger of two
neutron stars to the gamma ray burst which is something
we hypothesized was the case for a long time
but now we had really direct confirmation that that was happening. That's the first time
we've been able to do that.
[slate] Gravitational waves are often referred to
as ripples in space-time when a very dense
massive object accelerates, it actually causes gravitational
energy to propagate throughout the universe, changing the distance
between sources that are relatively close to each other. And
with very precise detectors on the ground we can actually measure
those changes and use them to infer the presence of these really remarkable
collisions.