If Two Neutron Stars Merged Near Earth This is What Could Happen
When two neutron stars collide with each other, they create something called a kilonova. If it happened close to Earth, it could be disastrous.
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00:00When two neutron stars collide with each other, they create something called a kilonova.
00:07Now, while this isn't likely to happen near Earth any time soon, if it did, the kilonova
00:12would shine night and day as bright as the moon, but squeezed into a small dot, according
00:16to Science News.
00:17The event was described in a study posted to Archive.org, and researchers say it would
00:21be the brightest thing in the sky.
00:22In a report published in Nature, a kilonova did occur 1,000 light years away from where
00:27Although this was roughly 80 million years before the solar system formed, and it lays
00:31the solar system with the elements that make up our planets now.
00:34So researchers took a kilonova explosion discovered in 2017 that was 130 million light years away,
00:39and simulated the light spectrum as if it were 1,000 light years away.
00:43Now, one that happens that close to Earth could happen once every 100 million years,
00:47so it's unlikely that we'll see one, which is probably a good thing, since if it released
00:51a gamma ray burst, high-energy light particles could indirectly wipe out life on our planet.
00:56NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology