Unfolding Story of a Kilonova: A Merger So Violent it Shook the Universe
“Neutron star mergers are extremely rare,” explained Columbia University astrophysicist Brian Metzger in an email to The Daily Galaxy about the rare phenomenon known as a kilonova, “occurring only once every 10 or 100 thousand years in galaxies like our own. There certainly were many kilonovae in the distant past in the Milky Way that may have appeared similar to bright novae on the night sky to our ancestors, but likely none since the advent of modern astronomy.”