Better Instruments Give Scientists a New Way to Study the Cosmos

Scientific American ---------- On the morning of August 17 last year, a new era of astronomy dawned with a flash in the sky. The burst of gamma rays, glimpsed by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, came from the merger of two neutron stars (extremely dense objects formed when massive stars collapse and die) somewhere in the universe. But gamma rays weren't the only thing the merger produced. Within seconds of Fermi's detection, ripples in spacetime from the merger had echoed through two facilities—the U.S.-based LIGO and the Italy-based Virgo observatories—like rolling thunder after a lightning strike. To learn more click on the picture below to read the article.