Neutron Stars

Last year, astronomers observed two neutron stars collide. A crash transmitted in gravitational waves to detectors here on Earth. Represented in sound, you can hear a small upwards sweep in frequency in the data, if you listen closely. Several seconds later, the first waves of electromagnetic radiation arrived here on Earth - the first time a collision has been detected by both light and gravitational waves . And it's in studying the electromagnetic echoes of the collision that astrophysicists have gotten a far better glimpse of what really happened after those binary neutron stars merged, 130 million light years away. "Oh yeah, absolutely, so it gives us an understanding of basically all the nitty-gritty of what's going on after the merger takes place." Kunal Mooley, an astrophysicist at Caltech.