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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday August 24 2017, @06:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the do-we-have-visual? dept.

LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory made physics history by managing to detect the previously elusive gravitational waves predicted by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity for the first time. They have, since they began operation, thrice observed the gravitational wave signatures emitted by the mergers of what are believed to be massive binary black hole systems. However, there is no confirmation of these events beyond the gravitational wave detection since black hole mergers may not emit anything else besides the gravitational waves. However, the merger of two neutron stars such as what is predicted to eventually happen to the Hulse–Taylor binary (which provided the first indirect confirmation of gravitational waves in the 1970s) will not only produce copious gravitational waves but possibly also a gamma ray burst or some other associated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The gravitational waves emitted by such an event would be weaker and harder for LIGO to detect, but on August 18th, noted astrophysicist J. Craig Wheeler tweeted a tantalising hint that they might actually have seen just such a thing happen:

New LIGO. Source with optical counterpart. Blow your sox off!

New Scientist reports that LIGO spokesperson David Shoemaker has not denied the rumour, and it seemed that four days after Wheeler's tweet the Hubble Space Telescope had been observing a neutron star binary candidate in the galaxy NGC 4993, which has since been deleted. From the article:

LIGO spokesperson David Shoemaker dodged confirming or denying the rumours, saying only "A very exciting O2 Observing run is drawing to a close August 25. We look forward to posting a top-level update at that time."

Speculation is focused on NGC 4993, a galaxy about 130 million light years away in the Hydra constellation. Within it, a pair of neutron stars are entwined in a deadly dance. While astronomers are staying silent on whether they are engaged in optical follow-ups to a potential gravitational wave detection, last night the Hubble Space Telescope turned its focus to a binary neutron star merger within the galaxy. A publicly available image of this merger was later deleted.

Further coverage and commentary from astrophysicist Ethan Siegel at Starts With A Bang.


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  • (Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Thursday August 24 2017, @11:33PM (2 children)

    by stormwyrm (717) on Thursday August 24 2017, @11:33PM (#558648) Journal

    It's unclear. The original space telescope live link in Ethan Siegel's article (which no longer shows the same image, it seems to change every day), formerly showed the picture of NGC 4993 which he appears to have saved (see the synopsis at ScienceBlogs [scienceblogs.com] for another link). Apparently the caption at the time read: "I am looking at the Star BNS-MERGER with Space Telescope Imaging Spectograph for on Tue, 22 Aug 2017 22:38:01 -04:00". That "BNS-MERGER" part is short for 'Binary Neutron Star Merger'. Here's another blog article [wordpress.com] by theoretical astrophysics professor Peter Coles at Cardiff University.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 25 2017, @12:07AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 25 2017, @12:07AM (#558666)

    (a) a requirement for the trigger to be activated was both a GW discovery AND a positive EM counterpart identification by the Dark Energy Camera

    https://telescoper.wordpress.com/2017/08/23/ligo-leaks-and-ngc-4993/ [wordpress.com]

    Verified by a dark energy camera?

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 25 2017, @01:01AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 25 2017, @01:01AM (#558682)
      The Dark Energy Camera is just what they call the specially-built camera that The Dark Energy Survey [wikipedia.org] project uses to do its work. It's a special camera attached to the Victor M. Blanco telescope optimised to observe very distant supernovae and other phenomena useful in inferring the presence and behaviour of dark energy.