ScienceDaily got off its duff and posted a pile of content today, much from Atacama's "ALMA" 'scope. We might as well start with NASA instead: this gamma burst. Way over the 1.7 solar mass boundary; in fact over the boundary that should keep it from eventhorizoning.
Sometimes neutron stars gain more mass; this happened to J0740+6620. Too much mass, they implode. If two of these merge, they usually spin around very fast on their way inward. So the neutron star is spinning just fast enough to keep it out of the mass limit!
But the music stops and when that happens, fooop.
The GRBs - two of 'em - came from Compton's Burst And Transient Source Experiment (BATSE). Which experiment isn't even running anymore; the data were 11 July 1991 then 1 November 1993. Glad they didn't delete their backups eh?
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