[Music throughout]
When superdense neutron stars crash, the event can be felt across the cosmos. But astronomers would love to find these systems before they collide. And new simulations are guiding the way.
Neutron stars pack the mass of our Sun into a ball the size of a city and have superstrong magnetic fields filled with energetic particles. New simulations run on NASA Ames’ Pleiades supercomputer show how these fields begin interacting long before the stars crash.
As the magnetic fields intertwine, they produce a glow that steadily increases as the stars spiral closer together. These simulations map where the most energetic gamma rays produce a distinctive glow we could detect from Earth, a goal for next-generation telescopes.
Simulations like these will help astronomers better understand how these fields interact and better predict the electromagnetic signals that will point to imminent neutron star collisions.
[NASA]