For the first time, a black hole containing a neutron star has been discovered

Astronomy is sometimes like zoology. As we discover new creatures, he notices new stars. On January 5 and 15, 2020, astronomers spotted an unprecedented object, they announced on June 29. Letters from the Journal of Astronomy. For the first time, a pair formed by a black hole and a neutron star are observed orbiting each other.

Separately, representatives of these two families have already been found. A black hole, a star so dense that it prevents all things and even all light from escaping its gravity, which was first photographed in 2019. Similarly, neutron stars, in the form of “beacons” in our galaxy, in a sphere only about ten kilometers in circumference where one or two equivalent of our Sun are concentrated, pulsate like their metronomes. Hence the name of their pulsars. Both objects are actually remnants of very large stars, which leave the fuel and collapse on themselves.

But these two heavyweights, which are still a mystery to physicists, have never been seen as a pair. In 2015, the two black holes returned together until they formed together. Then in 2017, the ballet of two neutron stars was seen. “But a neutron star and black hole binary were missing from our hunting table. We’re glad to find it! We saw both of them.” Astrid Lambert, a CNRS astronomer at the C டிte d’Azur Laboratory.

Energy explosion

On January 5, 2020, a black hole the size of nine suns sank four times as lightly as a neutron star. Ten days later, another event brought together two heroes weighing 5.7 and 1.5 sun, respectively. In both cases, the ballads did not last long. In a matter of ten seconds, the largest, black hole, the really weak, neutron star, has swallowed it. In the end, there is only a black hole, but the energy explodes, strong enough to shake space-time (the jelly type that makes up the universe), to create waves, as well as water formed by a pebble, a signal that came to Earth a billion years later.

By adjusting the length of the two laser weapons to 3 to 4 kilometers, these jolts were large enough to move the inventors. For the first event, a single detector called LIGO in Livingston (Louisiana) called this gravitational wave pass. Second, the three inventors, the second LIGO located in Hanford (Washington State) and the Virgin in Italy, waved by the waves, a monument to the catastrophe. These inventors, since 2015, have revolutionized astronomy by providing access to invisible phenomena since they no longer emit electromagnetic radiation. Kagra, the fourth invention to be built in Japan, is associated with LIGO-virgin collaboration and release, but has yet to detect gravitational waves.

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