ESO to announce "unprecedented discovery" on October 16

[Kerbart]

5 hours ago, munlander1 said:

Really, almost anything is possible here

Emphasis on almost. We can safely rule out anything truly spectacular.

[cypher_00]

It's about the first evidence of two colliding neutron stars instead of colliding black holes detected by LIGO and VIRGO and optically confirmed by ESO's VLT is my guess.

[p1t1o]

I've got it. They've discovered a classification that they can give Pluto that will make everybody happy.

[Cassel]

3 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

I've got it. They've discovered a classification that they can give Pluto that will make everybody happy.

that is what NASA is doing... ESO makes real discoveries

 

[MaxwellsDemon]

Wondering if it could be more detail about the water geysers on Europa.  

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, p1t1o said:

I've got it. They've discovered a classification that they can give Pluto that will make everybody happy.

They just have discovered that Pluto is a planet.

[Mitchz95]

Would an exomoon count as "unprecedented"? Or an exoplanet with visible rings?

[MaxwellsDemon]

17 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

They just have discovered that Pluto is a planet.

Reminds me of a funny moment in Boris Chertok's memoirs of the Soviet space program...  when Luna 3 (Hail the probe!) sent back the first photos of the far side of the moon, the early ones didn't come through very clearly.  When asked what the results were, Chertok responded, "We have determined that the moon is round."       (Chertok frequently seems to have been a wise guy, which is one of the things that make his memoirs enjoyable.)

[cubinator]

Tomorrow's Astronomy Picture of the Day will be a "Smashing Discovery" and "will debut during an NSF discovery announcement and press briefing on Monday". So probably a massive collision has been observed.

[Scotius]

No. I won't be tricked into the hype again. Too many times it turned out to be a really fascinating collision between two particles, or clay - like minerals somewhere or an epic photo of 'may-be may-be not' moonlet of Saturn. You wanna excite me again, Science? Show me something truly jaw-dropping.

[Green Baron]

Live Stream starts at 16:00 CEST

https://www.eso.org/public/live/

[kerbiloid]

(Making last-minute bets.)

The Earth is flat.

[munlander1]

54 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

(Making last-minute bets.)

The Earth is flat.

May I join you on that intelligent guess?

[Green Baron]

Ok. Whose bet was on the visible and gravitational observation of the merger of two neutron stars ?

:-)

Edited October 16, 2017 by Green Baron
s

[insert_name]

On 10/12/2017 at 5:05 AM, cypher_00 said:

It's about the first evidence of two colliding neutron stars instead of colliding black holes detected by LIGO and VIRGO and optically confirmed by ESO's VLT is my guess.

 

7 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Ok. Whose bet was on the visible and gravitational observation of the merger of two neutron stars ?

:-)

Is that the case, I can't watch the stream right now?

Edited October 16, 2017 by insert_name

[Green Baron]

@cypher_00 apparently knew what was coming :-)

https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1733/

and links to papers in the footnotes. Happy reading !

 

[PakledHostage]

19 hours ago, Scotius said:

You wanna excite me again, Science? Show me something truly jaw-dropping.

I don't know... This is actually pretty exciting. We are seeing  a whole new branch of astronomy/astrophysics being opened up with the advent of gravitational wave detectors, and in my mind this announcement really validates this year's Nobel Prize in Physics.

[p1t1o]

The results are in.

They discovered a new cool science term. Kilonova.

Not bad, science, not bad.

 

Spoiler

I know its not NEW-new, but you know.

 

[Green Baron]

Who is missing aliens, megatsructures and habitable planets ?

Just plain science. I personally find it pretty thrilling as well. We start to see a bit more of what's going on "around us".

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 

(From news)

[UmbralRaptor]

3 hours ago, Green Baron said:

Ok. Whose bet was on the visible and gravitational observation of the merger of two neutron stars ?

Sort of!

On 10/11/2017 at 2:19 PM, UmbralRaptor said:

Going to guess an optical counterpart to a gravitational wave detection. (Probably not, since I don't think VIRGO and ESO have much overlap?)

Also, it's really cool how fast LIGO has gone from "we can detect gravitational waves" to constraining stellar astrophysics.

[Shpaget]

So, why did the gravitational wave come to Earth 2 seconds before the X-rays?

[Kevin Kyle]

I was actually hoping for a major comet passing close by and lighting the night skies like no other before it. Now THAT would be amazing.

[Green Baron]

31 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

So, why did the gravitational wave come to Earth 2 seconds before the X-rays?

I doubt that was the case. I would guess that's within the margins of signal detection and processing in the instruments.

Edit: ... or travel through intergalactic medium (which is incredibly thin but existent) acted as a filter, or the processes during the merger have a sequence ... but i am guessing.

Edited October 16, 2017 by Green Baron

[insert_name]

1 hour ago, Shpaget said:

So, why did the gravitational wave come to Earth 2 seconds before the X-rays?

The gravitational wave was produced during the merger, the X Ray's were produced by the jets of material