The thousand-star explosion shot gold, silver and platinum throughout the universe

NASA researchers discovered traces of a thousand-star explosion 1.7 billion light-years from Earth.

Huge explosions fired gold, silver, platinum and many other rare elements that could happen often, according to new NASA research. Named, it was an explosion that occurred in the binary system containing two solid bodies like neutron stars. The two neutron stars collided with each other, spewing out a powerful stream of high-energy particles across the universe, the Daily Galaxy reported.


Simulate a thousand-star explosion caused by two neutron stars merged.(Video: NASA).

The phenomenon was first observed on October 16, 2017 when an international group of astronomers and physicists announced the discovery of light and gravitational waves and came from the same source, the merger of two stars. neutron . The discovery helps "open a new chapter in astrophysics". The giant explosion caused shock in the universe, distorting the field - time.

Currently, astronomers have identified a similar event and concluded that they could happen more often than speculation."This is a big step forward when the findings from one object are increased," said Eleonora Troja, head of research at the University of Maryland and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

The object described in the new study with the number GRB150101B is a gamma ray beam which is zoned by NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory in 2015. Later observations of Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope and the Discovery Channel telescope shows that the GRB150101B has many similarities to the merging of neutron star GW170817. Laser interferometer observatory (LIGO) discovered GW170817 2017.

New research was published on August 16, 2018 in Nature Communications. The results show that two separate objects are actually directly related to each other."We encountered the case of two similar cosmic events. They look alike, work the same and come from the same area, so the simplest explanation is that they are of the same origin , " Geoffrey Ryan , co-author of the study at the University of Maryland's Department of Astronomy, said.

Picture 1 of The thousand-star explosion shot gold, silver and platinum throughout the universe
The light emitted from the GRB150101B is mainly in the blue band of the spectrum.

In both explosions, a high-energy particle stream does not spray straight towards the Earth. The light emitted from the GRB150101B is mainly in the blue band of the spectrum, proving that this event is a similar thousand-star explosion GW170817.

Although there are many similarities, GRB150101B and GW170817 also have some important differences. The first difference lies in the position, GW170817 is relatively close to Earth about 130 million light-years while the GRB150101B is 1.7 billion light-years away. Unlike GW170817, GRB150101B does not have gravitational wave data. Without this information, the team could not calculate the mass of the two merged objects.