Neutron stars: New telescope detects dead suns colliding

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Thanks to a potent new telescope, astronomers can now for the first time see the collision of neutron stars, or dead suns.

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Neutron star collisions are essential to our comprehension of the universe.

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Heavy metals that generated stars and planets like our own billions of years ago are believed to have been produced by them.

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The telescope must work quickly to find the crashes because the light from them is only visible for a few nights.

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One of these collisions was seen by astronomers in 2017, but they mostly happened across it by accident.

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On the crater-filled Spanish island of La Palma, the British-built Gravitational Wave Optical Transient observatory (GOTO) will now conduct a methodical search for them.

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Prof. Danny Steeghs of Warwick University told me on La Palma, "When a really good detection comes along, it's all hands on deck to make the most of it."

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"It's crucial to move quickly. We're looking for something that will vanish quickly; there isn't much time left ".

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A tiny teaspoon of the material from neutron stars weighs four billion tonnes because they are so massive.

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Astronomers can effectively open one up to see what's inside thanks to the telescope.

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telescope which located on a mountain peak so that it may have a clear view of the sky, is home to a dozen devices of various sizes and forms, each of which is used to research a different phenomenon.

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