The neutron star beam is weirder than we thought NSF/LIGO/Sonoma State University/A. Simonnet
The leftovers from the first neutron star smashup we’ve ever seen have surprised us. The beam of light that jetted out of the explosion has gotten even brighter in the three months since the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) and other observatories spotted the collision. This brightening may mean that similar jets of x-rays and gamma radiation are more complicated than we thought.
At the beginning of December, astronomers used the Chandra X-ray Observatory to take another look at the spot where we watched…
