Jet from Neutron-Star Merger GW170817 Appeared to Move Four Times Faster than Light

Sci-News.com ^ | Sep 12, 2018 | News Staff / Source

[ETL]

Radio observations using a combination of NSF’s Very Long Baseline Array, the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array and the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope have revealed that a fast-moving jet of particles broke out into interstellar space after a pair of neutron stars merged in NGC 4993, a lenticular galaxy approximately 130 million light-years from Earth.

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Called GW170817, the merger of two neutron stars sent gravitational waves rippling through space. It was the first event ever to be detected both by gravitational waves and electromagnetic waves, including gamma rays, X-rays, visible light, and radio waves.

The aftermath of the merger, was observed by orbiting and ground-based telescopes around the world.

Astrophysicists watched as the characteristics of the received waves changed with time, and used the changes as clues to reveal the nature of the phenomena that followed the merger.

One question that stood out was whether or not the event had produced a narrow, fast-moving jet of material that made its way into interstellar space.

That was important, because such jets are required to produce the type of gamma ray bursts that theorists had said should be caused by the merger of neutron-star pairs.

The answer came when Dr. Kunal Mooley of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and Caltech and co-authors discovered that a region of radio emission from the GW170817 merger had moved, and the motion was so fast that only a jet could explain its speed.

“We measured an apparent motion that is four times faster than light. That illusion, called superluminal motion, results when the jet is pointed nearly toward Earth and the material in the jet is moving close to the speed of light,” Dr. Mooley said.

[shotgun]

They list all versions with a max top speed of 9.95 - 9.97 Warp.

[MHGinTN]

Did a duck arrive when the jet reached earth?