Submission 2023
| Submitted by: | Steven Fahlman |
| Department: | Physics |
| Faculty: | Science |
Neutron stars are highly compact stars, containing the mass of the sun squeezed into a sphere the size of Edmonton. In a rare event, two neutron stars can merge together to form a hypermassive neutron star surrounded by a torus – an even larger neutron star encircled by a donut of material expelled from the stars during the merger. During the merger, the magnetic field contained in the neutron stars gets amplified and wound into towers above and below the star. These magnetic towers then carry away matter from the star extremely quickly – up to the speed of light!
The matter expelled in these mergers is responsible for the creation of elements heavier than Iron: For example, almost all the Gold on Earth is from matter ejected from neutron star mergers that was incorporated into the Earth when the solar system formed.
This is a 3D rendering of the density from a simulation of a neutron star merger run on the Niagara supercomputer in Toronto. It shows the extremely dense hypermassive neutron star in the center (For comparison, the red colour is 100 trillion times the density of lead), surrounded by the torus, with magnetic field streamlines in white showing the magnetic towers.