Chinese scientists on Monday announced observation of the “optical counterpart” of gravitational waves coming from the merger of two binary neutron stars using a survey telescope in Antarctica.<\/p>\n
The gravitational waves were first discovered by the U.S.-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors on Aug. 17. The Chinese telescope independently observed optical signals resulting from the merger the next day, according to the Chinese Center for Antarctic Astronomy.<\/p>\n
It was the first time humans have detected gravitational waves and the corresponding electromagnetic phenomena resulting from a binary neutron star merger.<\/p>\n
Data exclusively collected by the Chinese detector has led to a preliminary estimate of the ejecta parameters, according to Wang Lifan, director of the center.<\/p>\n
The merging process ejected radioactive material with more than 3,000 times the mass of the Earth at a speed of up to 30 percent the speed of light, Wang said.<\/p>\n
The host galaxy of the incident is located about 130 million light years from the Earth.<\/p>\n
In 2015, LIGO detectors confirmed the existence of gravitational waves produced during the merger of two black holes, which were predicted by Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity 100 years ago.<\/p>\n
So far, LIGO and its partners have discovered four cases of gravitational waves coming from mergers of two black holes.<\/p>\n
The Chinese telescope is a catadioptric optical telescope with an entrance pupil diameter of 500 mm. Its unique location allows for continuous observations lasting longer than 24 hours during the austral winter.(Xinhua)<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chinese scientists on Monday announced observation of the “optical counterpart” of gravitational waves coming from the merger of two binary neutron stars using a survey telescope in Antarctica. The gravitational waves were first discovered by the U.S.-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors on Aug. 17. The Chinese telescope independently observed optical signals resulting from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4480"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}