This discovery is about the collision of
two neutron stars. These neutron stars
were orbiting each other,
approaching a speed of light and then
they collided, they produced a burst of
gravitational waves and then what is
really extraordinary is that this bursts
of gravitational waves is followed by a
gamma-ray flash and then a flash of
light, then a slowly revealing burst of
radio waves. This has ushered in a new
era in astronomy called multi-messenger
astronomy. This is a first for the world,
where we've had a thousand scientists
around the world working on this problem
and now we can understand how the
universe is really working. We can
understand in the very early universe,
the first fraction of a second when the
universe formed, we can now understand
the most exotic creation of stars in the
universe. This also leads to the
evolution of life because life requires
certain elements that are created from
the stars. For the first time scientists
have identified exactly where and
exactly how far away this explosion
happened, this one we know exactly that
it is 120 million light
years away in another galaxy, a very
exotic galaxy. Using the Zadko telescope,
international collaborators in France
and also in Australia work together to
capture the light and this will allow us
to unlock a very mysterious process of
metals forming after the neutron stars
collided. The gold that you are wearing, a
fraction of that gold has come from the
collision of neutron stars. The data
produced is so rich and so extraordinary
that it will keep scientists working for
years trying to understand that data and
combine it in new ways. There will be
hundreds of scientific publications
announcing new discoveries following
this event.
