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Astronomers unravel a blast that sent ripples in space-time
- Tehchops 8y ago>"During such events, massive amounts of heavy metals are formed. This collision, for instance, produced a lump of gold with the mass of our planet in just a split second." We need to find a localized wormhole and go mine that.
- jajag 8y agoYeah and watch inflation sky-rocket: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_revolution
- caprese 8y agoyeah but you still get to sell it even as your yields decrease death spirals are still profitable for the issuer
- sarcasmOrTears 8y agoLowering price of materials allow the creation of new and more goods, so it's always a good thing
- rev_null 8y agoHow is gold created out of the collision of stars composed of neutrons?
- adrianN 8y agoIf you smash proton and neutron clumps the size of stars together you get fragments that are gold-sized.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoThat makes a little more sense. The original quote suggests that a single very large lump of gold was created, not a very large number of separate gold atoms. This raises the question of why gold tends to be found near other gold on Earth.
- ohum 8y agoIs there an answer to that question? And, why is the distribution of matter not random? Maybe some sort of gravitational grouping? (eg earth's iron core, centrifugal enrichment of uranium). Or affinity for some orientation relative to field states, magnetism/diamagnetism etc.? Like attracts?
- CBLT 8y agoAs I understand it, the distribution was decided when the earth was still hot. So the mechanics you're interested in are those of high-temperature solutions containing liquid gold, which I don't understand that much. There's other interesting phenomena too, like gold frequently occurs in quartz rocks[0]. [0] https://www.quora.com/Why-is-gold-frequently-located-in-quartz-rock/answer/Gary-Clifton-1 https://www.quora.com/Why-is-gold-frequently-located-in-quar...
- adrianN 8y agoI'm not a geologist at all, but when you freeze soda you tend to get water ice infused with veins of high-sugar soda concentrate. I wouldn't be surprised if similar mechanisms tend to lump matter with similar melting points together in molten rock.
- has2k1 8y ago> This raises the question of why gold tends to be found near other gold on Earth. When you spin a combination of stuff that is "loose enough" at sufficient speeds, the centrifugal force acts on the constituent masses differently. As a result similar masses coalesce. This is the same principle used to separate and concentrate (enrich) all kinds of stuff in centrifuges.
- Tehchops 8y ago>How is gold created out of the collision of stars composed of neutrons? They are composed predominantly out of neutrons. Some percentage of their composition is still electrons and assorted atomic nuclei, which is a non-trivial amount of matter considering the common range of density they tend to have. I would imagine all kinds of interesting(strange?) interactions take place when such dense and energetic objects collide.
- dredmorbius 8y agoNeutronium (degenerate neutron fluid) is only stable at immense pressure. Relieve that pressure -- by flinging bits into space in a collision or explosion -- and it reverts to neutrons + protons + electrons + antineutrinos, forming first ultramassive nuclei, which rapidly decay to stable elements, many being heavy elements well above iron in atomic number. The nuclei mar be formed by r-capture (rapid capture), or perhaps devolve from dense neutronium clumps. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature04807 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature04807 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutronium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutronium
- A_No_Name_Mouse 8y ago"The vision of VLBI is so sharp that if people were playing table tennis on the Moon we would see the moves of the ping pong ball. " I was under the impression that a radio telescope could only take a single pixel image. Are they using a different kind of receiver that can create a complete image? If so, how can they still increase resolution using interference?
- coder5506 8y agoIt's a raster scan. Larger images are built one pixel at a time.
- fspeech 8y agoI think he was talking about angular resolution. EM wave arrives at different antennas at slightly different time. The phase difference allows for very high resolution of the direction the wave is coming from. [VLBI](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-long-baseline_interferometry https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-long-baseline_interfero...) effectively produces an antenna with an aperture the size of the Earth. To make it work one needs extremely accurate time synchronization and spatial location. In the interview he talked about continental drift of several millimeters per year. Those are the things they need to compensate for.
- goodcanadian 8y agoA sibling comment mentions raster scanning: building up an image one pixel at a time. That is largely true for a single telescope (though it is possible to have an array of receivers taking multiple pixels at the same time). However, VLBI is an array of telescopes. Using interferometry - measuring the interference pattern of the signals of each pair of telescopes - we get simultaneous data on a variety of angular scales and orientations. As the Earth turns, the sky appears to turn, and more points in the UV plane can be measured. Once you have enough data, you can essentially get an image by doing a Fourier transform of the data.
- hi41 8y agoKudos to the scientists, astronomers and engineers who made this possible. This is so amazing. The reference to being able to see Ping balls on moon is unbelievable. We have such brilliant people in our midst!
- osheamonn 8y ago"In 2015 gravitational waves were detected that resulted from a collision of supermassive black holes." "The 2015 discovery was an event of another physical nature, much more powerful than the 2017 one, as it included the collision of supermassive black holes, each of the order of 100 millions of solar masses" This is not true. GW150914 was from the collision of two black holes of ~30 solar masses each.