NASA said in a press release that the energy released from the collision of the two stars was comparable to that of a supernova.
Scientists have been unpacking the data that was gathered because of its complexity. It is impossible that things appear to travel faster than light. Don't fret. There is a valid explanation.
The event is a merger of two stars. Some of the densest objects in the universe are the collapsed core of a once-massive star. Four billion tons would be the weight of a single cup of tea.
NASA says it's the first time scientists have detected both from a merger of two neutron stars because of the great gravity.
The two stars collapsed into a black hole after the explosion. There was a spinning disk around the black hole. Scientists were able to piece together the event with extreme precision by combining their findings with that of the National Science Foundation.
The jets were travelling at seven times the speed of light. That's not possible. Scientists say the discrepancy is due to a phenomenon called superliminal motion. NASA says that since the jet approaches our planet at nearly the speed of light, the light it emits at later points has a shorter distance to travel.
Scientists found the real speed to be at least 99.97 percent of the speed of light.
The scientists hope their findings, published in a paper this week in Nature, will allow for more precise observations of neutron star mergers in the future, which could possibly help calculate the rate of the universe's expansion.
Scientists say there's a huge graveyard of stars in our universe.
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