The result of a collision between two ultradense neutron stars surprised scientists. When observing the event called kilonova the creation of heavy metals, such as silver, iron and even gold .
When using the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope , it was possible to observe the forged elements in more detail. Such a discovery could help to understand a little more about powerful neutron star mergers.
“It was exciting to study a kilonova like we had never seen before, using the powerful eyes of Hubble and James Webb,” he said. Eleonora Troja member of the research and astrophysics team at the University of Rome at Space.com.
“This is the first time that we were able to verify that metals heavier than iron and silver were recently produced in front of us”, he further stated.
To the GRBs , which are the most powerful bursts of energy in the universe, have been linked to neutron star mergers before. However, this discovery is different.
Although neutron star mergers have been associated with short GRBs, long GRBs were believed to occur as a result of the collapse of massive stars and not such collisions.
The extremely bright and long explosion, designated GRB 230307A and detected by devices aboard the Fermi mission NASA in March 2023, it lasted 200 seconds . This marked the second most energetic GRB ever seen.
Source: CNN Brasil
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