Binary neutron star merger

This movie shows a computer simulation of the final stages of the inspiral and merging of two neutron stars. Neutron stars are dense objects created in certain supernova explosions, and concentrate around 1.5 solar masses inside a radius less than 20 km. A pair of two neutron stars will orbit each other closer and closer, but also more and more rapidly. The last few orbits take place within only a hundredth of a second (the movie is in slow motion), and produces strong gravitational waves. Such waves were recently detected by the LIGO/Virgo gravitational wave detector network. The most likely outcome in this case was the formation of a black hole. The movie illustrates another possible outcome, namely the formation of a stable neutron star. The color depicts the density of matter, with the initial neutron stars and the merged one in white (bordered by a blue line), and lower density material in pink,yellow, green, blue, and black (in order of decreasing density). The lower panel shows a two dimensional cut in the orbital plane, and the upper one a cut in a plane including the rotation axis. The yellow lines in the movie enclose waves of ejected matter. Matter ejected from merging neutron stars is the most likely source for the creation of heavy elements in the universe, such as gold.

Visualization: Wolfgang Kastaun ; Simulation: Wolfgang Kastaun; Computational Resources: Holodeck cluster Hannover; Affiliations: Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics Hannover, Binary Merger Observations and Numerical Relativity Research Group