[ExI] More news from LIGO on October 16

[John Clark]

On Sat, Oct 7, 2017 at 11:12 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:


> ​> ​
> Best guess, they will tell us they found a merger of two neutron stars.
> That will have a different signature from the black hole merger.
>
>
I think that's a good guess. And if we're very lucky satellites may have
detected a fast gamma ray burst that occurred at the
​ ​
exact
​ ​
same time
​ ​
that
​ ​
LIGO detected
​ ​
a
​ ​
gravitational wave.

We know
​ ​
that
​ ​
on August 18 2017 at
​ ​
12:41:06.47
​ ​
Universal Time
​ ​
the Fermi Gamma-Ray satellite detected a fast gamma ray burst lasting 2.048
seconds
​ ​
coming from
​ ​
the
​ ​
vicinity of
​ ​
galaxy NGC 4993
​ ​
about 130 million
​ ​
light years
​ ​
from Earth,
​ ​
and we know that by fast gamma ray burst standards this one was a bit
closer than average but was not particularly powerful, probably because it
was not aimed directly at us. Gamma ray bursts are not rare, during the
last 9 years on average one has been
​ ​
detected
​ ​
per day,
​ ​
and
​ ​
on the face of it
​ ​
there seemed
​ ​
to be
​ ​nothing
 special about this one, and yet for some reason on that same day of August
18 LIGO sent out confidential messages (that leaked of course) to optical
and radio astronomers strongly suggesting that today would be a very good
day to look at NGC 4993
​ and its environs. ​
Now why
​ ​
in the world
​ ​
would they do that? Hmm...

​ John K Clark ​






>
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