The main event of the year was the collision between two stars. The immediate and long-term effects of the merger were bound to be fascinating.
Scientists have come up with a new idea. The two stars ejected a jet of material that was seven times the speed of light.
Our current understanding of physics makes this impossible. The phenomenon known as superluminal speed is an illusion due to our viewing angle.
The jet was found to be incredibly fast even after it was corrected.
An astronomer from the University of California, Berkeley says that the jet was moving at a speed of at least 99% of the speed of light.
The data on the jet was obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope, which took a set of observations at 8 days and then again at 159 days after the merger.
The National Science Foundation has a number of radio telescopes. A measurement called very long baseline interferometry can be constructed using pool of data.
A team led by astronomer Kunal Mooley of Caltech was able to identify and track a jet that erupted when the two ultra dense stellar core came together.
When something is very close to our line of sight, superluminal motion happens. In our day-to-day lives, we don't usually take into account the distance required for the light to travel to us when we are near an object.
The jet is moving almost as fast as the light it emits, creating the illusion of its own light covering longer distances than it does, and therefore moving at an impossible speed.
A lot of number crunching is required to reveal the true speed of the jet.
A superluminal speed of seven times faster than light was shown by the Hubble data. The jet slowed down to a superluminal speed four times faster than light after the merger.
Mooley says that he's amazed that Hubble could give us such a precise measurement.
The result further restricts the angle at which we can see the jet. Mooley and his colleagues have measured the distance between the two points.
They show in their paper that using space-based telescopes is an excellent way to measure the motions of jets in neutron-star mergers.
The larger collecting area of the James Webb Space Telescope should allow it to perform more Astrometry than the Hubble Space Telescope...
We have to wait for another collision of stars.
The research has been published.
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