一個黑洞遇到了一顆中子星，就像吃豆人一樣吞噬了它

一個黑洞遇到了一顆中子星，就像吃豆人一樣吞噬了它

About 900 million years ago, in a galaxy far away, a black hole and a neutron star crossed paths. It didn't go well for the star.

大約9億年前，在一個遙遠(yuǎn)的星系中，一個黑洞和一顆中子星相遇。這對中子星來說并不順利。

Black holes may be the Homer Simpsons of the cosmos — and not much interrupts their timeless routine of eating, burping and napping.

黑洞可能是宇宙中的荷馬·辛普森——它們吃東西、打嗝和打盹的永恒規(guī)律不會受到太多干擾。

You might think a neutron star wouldn't go down that easily. After all, these are the ultra dense remains of stars that, as NASA puts it, can squish the mass of two-and-a-half suns into a ball that's about the size of a city.

你可能認(rèn)為中子星不會那么容易墜落。畢竟，這些是恒星的超高密度殘骸，正如美國宇航局所說，可以把2.5個太陽的質(zhì)量壓成一個城市大小的球。

This battle of the ultra-dense behemoths probably didn't last long, but its aftermath was felt across the universe. (Photo: Dotted Yeti/Shutterstock)

But down the hatch went this neutron star.

但是這顆中子星從艙口掉了下去。

And all that remained was the belch. Or, in less Homeresque terms, the gravitational waves.

只剩下打嗝了?；蛘?，用不那么豪邁的術(shù)語來說，引力波。

At least that's the story a newly logged event dubbed S190814bv tells us.

至少這是一個名為S190814bv的新記錄事件告訴我們的故事。

Those gravitational waves — essentially ripples in the fabric of space caused by major cosmic events — are only now reaching us, according to scientists at Australian National University who logged it.

據(jù)澳大利亞國立大學(xué)的科學(xué)家記錄，這些引力波——主要是由重大宇宙事件引起的空間結(jié)構(gòu)中的漣漪——現(xiàn)在才到達(dá)我們這里。

In fact, they claim it's the first time a collision between these cosmic heavyweights has ever been recorded. Although it probably wasn't much of a tussle — lead researcher Susan Scott compares the black hole to Pac-man "snuffing out the star instantly" — the real story is in the ripples that took hundreds of million years to get here.

事實上，他們聲稱這是第一次記錄到這些宇宙重量級之間的碰撞。盡管這可能并不是一場激烈的爭論——首席研究員蘇珊·斯科特將黑洞比作吃豆人“瞬間將恒星熄滅”——但真正的故事發(fā)生在花了數(shù)億年時間才到達(dá)這里的漣漪中。

A neutron star packs several solar masses into a very small form factor. (Photo: Jurik Peter/Shutterstock)

Researchers relied on data collected by the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in the U.S. and the European Gravitational Observatory known as Virgo.

研究人員依靠美國先進的激光干涉儀引力波天文臺(LIGO)和歐洲著名的室女座引力波天文臺(Virgo)收集的數(shù)據(jù)。

Both are highly sensitive to gravitational waves, collecting mountains of data on the event that the worldwide scientific community is still poring over.

它們都對引力波高度敏感，收集了大量關(guān)于這一事件的數(shù)據(jù)，而全球科學(xué)界仍在仔細(xì)研究這一事件。

"It's like the night before Christmas," Ryan Foley, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz tells ScienceAlert. "I'm just waiting to see what's under the tree."

加州大學(xué)圣克魯茲分校的天文學(xué)家瑞安·福利告訴《科學(xué)預(yù)警》:“這就像圣誕節(jié)前夜。”“我只是在等著看樹下有什么。”

If this is Christmas for astronomers, it only took 900 million years for Santa's sleigh to get here. At least, that's what those gravitational waves suggest so far. But there's so much more to come.

如果這是天文學(xué)家的圣誕節(jié)，那么圣誕老人的雪橇只用了9億年就到達(dá)了這里。至少，這就是引力波目前所顯示的。但還有很多事情要做。

"Based on this experience, we're very confident that we've just detected a black hole gobbling up a neutron star," Scott says.

斯科特說:“根據(jù)這一經(jīng)驗，我們非常有信心剛剛探測到一個黑洞吞噬了一顆中子星。”

"However, there is the slight but intriguing possibility that the swallowed object was a very light black hole — much lighter than any other black hole we know about in the Universe. That would be a truly awesome consolation prize."

“然而，有一種微小但有趣的可能性是，被吞噬的物體是一個非常輕的黑洞——比我們所知的宇宙中任何其他黑洞都輕得多。那將是一個真正了不起的安慰獎。”