According to a NASA press release, in 2017 scientists observed a spectacular collision of two neutron stars with a powerful blast of radiation, the energy it releases said to be “comparable to a supernova.”
However, due to its complexity, it took scientists to examine all the collected data in detail until today. Among many other interesting finds were beings that seemed to move faster than light. This should be impossible in theory. Fortunately, there is a very logical explanation for this situation.
Speed faster than the speed of light: why?
The event, designated GW170817, is what is known as a binary neutron star merger. Neutron stars are once the collapsed cores of massive stars and some of the densest objects in the universe. One of these, which is only about the size of a teaspoon, would weigh four billion tons on Earth, NASA said.
As NASA points out, they have tremendous gravity with their unbelievable density. This gravity, large enough to bring two of these neutron stars together, is the first instance scientists have detected together in a neutron star merger in an explosive collision that spews gravitational waves and gamma radiation into space.
The Hubble Space Telescope observed two neutron stars collapse into a black hole after the explosion. A spinning disk then formed around the black hole, which hurled jets of incredibly fast matter into space. Combining their findings with those of the National Science Foundation, the scientists were able to piece together the event extremely precisely, including how fast the jets were moving.
Data from Hubble observations initially showed that the jets were moving at seven times the speed of light. Of course, that has to be impossible. Scientists attribute this inconsistency to a phenomenon known as cross-border movement. Basically, because the jets are approaching our planet at nearly the speed of light, the light it emits at later points has a shorter travel distance each time, making it appear as if it’s moving faster than it actually is, NASA said.
With some additional calculations, the scientists found the true speed and determined that it was at least 99.97 percent of the speed of light. Although it is not breaking the known rules, it is possible to say that it is still quite fast.
In a paper published this week in Nature, the scientists say they hope their findings will allow for even more precise observations of neutron star mergers in the future, potentially helping to calculate the expansion rate of the universe.
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