The black hole, as I told you before, is one of the objects in the universe about which scientists are still trying to discover more information, and what they have now observed is a "rare first". More precisely, scientists managed to observe the first collision between a black hole and a neutron star, and in the video clip above you can see a simulation of how the two objects in the universe combined.
The black hole and the neutron star are two of the objects in the universe that are very difficult for scientists to discover, and what they saw now was thought impossible by many. A collision between a black hole and a neutron star was one of the theories that some scientists presented on several occasions, but because no such event was discovered, many believed that it was not possible in reality.
Black Hole: AMAZING VIDEO with a Believed Impossible Premiere
The black hole and the neutron star that collided at an extremely high distance from the Earth released very strong gravitational waves that reverberated for very long distances in the universe, reaching us in 2020. The gravitational waves hit the Earth at distances of 10 days from each other, and the black hole that swallowed the neutron star we are talking about now is more than likely a supermassive one, otherwise it could not destroy a neutron star.
"Gravitational waves allowed us to detect a collision between a black hole and a neutron star, but the mixed collision of a black hole with a neutron star was the elusive missing piece of the family picture of compact object mergers. Completing this picture is crucial to constrain the type of astrophysical models of compact object formation and binary evolution. Inherent in these models are their predictions about the rates at which black holes and neutron stars merge into one another. With these detections, we finally have measurements of merger rates in all three categories of compact binary mergers.”
The black hole that generated these gravitational waves would have a mass 9 times greater than that of the sun, while the neutron star would have a mass 1.9 times greater, and the event would have happened 900 million years ago . Scientists believe that there was another event of this kind that involved a black hole and a smaller neutron star, it took place 1 billion years ago, but they have no data to confirm it without a doubt .
The black hole that devoured this neutron star has most likely grown in mass, but scientists are still trying to observe it to learn more about it now.
