Kilonova
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The transient optical and infrared glow that follows the merger of two neutron stars, powered by the radioactive decay of freshly synthesised r-process nuclei in the ejected material. It is faint compared with a supernova and fades within days, reddening rapidly as heavy elements with dense line forests take over the opacity. AT2017gfo, found about eleven hours after the gravitational-wave event GW170817 in the galaxy NGC 4993 at roughly 40 megaparsecs, was the first kilonova identified with a known progenitor, and its light curve and spectra matched r-process predictions closely enough to establish neutron-star mergers as a site of heavy-element production. It is the clearest case in modern astrophysics of a theoretical prediction and its observational confirmation arriving with a timestamp. Not a place.
A node is not a place. Drawing it on a map would assert something about the world that no stored fact supports.
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Timeline
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Connections · 1
- Rapid neutron capture (the r-process)depends_on
Assembled narrative · 1
Assembled from 14 blocks · 1 evidence · 6 related
- Story
- The transient optical and infrared glow that follows the merger of two neutron stars, powered by the radioactive decay of freshly synthesised r-process nuclei in the ejected material. It is faint compared with a supernova and fades within days, reddening rapidly as heavy elements with dense line forests take over the opacity. AT2017gfo, found about eleven hours after the gravitational-wave event GW170817 in the galaxy NGC 4993 at roughly 40 megaparsecs, was the first kilonova identified with a known progenitor, and its light curve and spectra matched r-process predictions closely enough to establish neutron-star mergers as a site of heavy-element production. It is the clearest case in modern astrophysics of a theoretical prediction and its observational confirmation arriving with a timestamp. Not a place.
- Knowledge
- Rapid neutron capture (the r-process)
- Kilonova
- Connections
- Rapid neutron capture (the r-process)
- A neutron-star merger is detected in gravitational waves and light
- Stellar nucleosynthesis
- Kilonova
- B2FH sets out the synthesis of the elements in stars
- A neutron-star merger is detected in gravitational waves and light
- Evidence
- Establishes the 17 August 2017 binary neutron-star merger and the associated kilonova AT2017gfo in NGC 4993 at roughly 40 Mpc as a site of r-process nucleosynthesis. Volume and page numbers are deliberately not asserted because they were not confirmed. Ejecta mass estimates of 0.03-0.06 solar masses come from modelling papers summarised via search, not from this paper.
Observed changes · 0
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