00:01When superdense neutron stars crash, the event can be felt across the cosmos.
00:08But astronomers would love to find these systems before they collide.
00:13And new simulations are guiding the way.
00:17Neutron stars pack the mass of our Sun into a ball the size of a city.
00:24When two orbit each other, they'll eventually merge.
00:31That event produces ripples in spacetime, a blast of gamma rays and other light,
00:37and may leave behind a new black hole.
00:43Neutron stars have super-strong magnetic fields filled with energetic particles.
00:50New simulations run on NASA Ames's Pleiades supercomputer
00:54show how these fields begin interacting long before the stars crash.
01:11As the magnetic fields intertwine, they produce a glow that steadily increases as the stars spiral closer together.
01:24These simulations map where the most energetic gamma rays produce a distinctive glow we could detect from Earth,
01:32a goal for next-generation telescopes.
01:40Simulations like these will help astronomers better understand how these fields interact,
01:46and better predict the electromagnetic signals that will point to imminent neutron star collisions.
01:53And now they're in the universe.
02:00The
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