"The Dance of the Neutron Stars"
The Romantic Story -
It was beautiful.
The two Neutron Stars had been circling each other for billions of years.
The cadence was perfect and the symmetry was simply exquisite.
The dance was like two lovers performing a circular, untouchable, non-contact tango.
The precise, professional choreography had been honed over multiple millennia; producing a spectacle with a palpable sensuality.
But then...
...something drastically changed!
Whether it was caused by external forces or by intrinsic design is a mystery; nevertheless, the two dancers edged closer and closer until they merged; fusing into an indescribable ball of energy that couldn't be contained a nanosecond longer.
The resulting explosion of beautiful lights and cacophony of deafening crackles, bangs and booms echoed throughout the cosmos (and made the Neutrino couple's unique brood of offspring go largely unnoticed).
But the few not distracted by the lights and sounds could catch glimpses of the Stars' precious progeny - a googolplex (currently, the largest number with a name equaling the number 1 followed by a google zeroes) of gold and platinum particles that will, over time, form new stars.
And the dance continues...
The Science
With new tools, astrophysicists have detected and recorded gravity waves. Very Interesting. These gravity waves tell dramatic stories - such as the Neutron Star dance depicted earlier.
See: "How Gravitational Waves Led Astronomers to Neutron Star Gold"
"The origin of the universe's heaviest elements has mystified scientists, but after Monday's (Oct. 16) historic announcement of the detection of gravitational waves produced by two colliding neutron stars, astronomers have struck gold — literally."
Source: https://www.space.com/38493-gravitational-waves-neutron-star-gold.html
"GRAVITATIONAL WAVES, AND ALL THE GOLD IN THE UNIVERSE"
Imagine that?
By JaiChai