Bright and energetic: Artist's impression of a gamma ray burst.
Credit: NASA
Since the atoms that make up normal, "solid" matter are mostly empty space, a star made almost entirely of tightly packed neutrons is extraordinarily dense: a fingernail's worth of a neutron star would have a mass of more than a trillion kilograms.
A neutron star's density and gravity is second only to a black hole, said Gehrels. "When you have these two hard stars that run into each other, it's a very rapid fiery explosion. It's kind of like a crash."
One way to prove or disprove this idea would be to detect gravitational waves. Before the two neutron stars collide, they would orbit each other as a binary system. Because their fields of gravity are so intense, the stars ought to send waves rippling outward in the fabric of space-time: gravitational waves.
Gravitational wave detectors
As the neutron stars spiral in toward each other, the frequency of those waves would ramp up in a characteristic pattern called a chirp signal. "Scientists are trying to [detect] that now," Gehrels said. "It's the ultimate way of verifying the model."
Experts at the Huntsville symposium are discussing the progress of gravitational wave detectors such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) located in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana.
By using lasers to carefully measure the distances between pairs of mirrors at these observatories, LIGO scientists can notice tiny changes in these distances that would occur if subtle gravitational waves were passing through the Earth.
Other possible explanations for short GRBs exist as well, but only hard data from experiments such as LIGO can settle what is the real cause of these mysterious celestial bursts.
LIGO, TGFs, long-vs-short gamma ray bursts?
Feh... It's too bad LIGO has returned naught but NULL results so far. Yet the NSF is still dumping money into it for "upgrades." If it fails to perform in detecting gravitational waves after the upgrades, it should be scrapped and a newer better theory put together.
I mean, it should be ACCIDENTALLY detecting gravitational waves by now (even stuff it wasn't directly looking for). SOMEthing! That it has achieved no detections so far seems to give us something of an answer to that question, especially since they've said it should be sensitive enough to detect extremely faint signals.
Now, an interesting article has been brought to my attention about gamma rays. It concerns, specifically terrestrial gamma ray flashes.
(Terrestrial gamma-ray flashes)
http://sprg.ssl.berkeley.edu/~tohban/nuggets/?page=article&article_id=32
Interestingly, it seems that TGFs have been found in association with electrical activity. Specifically, thunderstorms. While they had thought that they might come from the more exotic upper atmospheric discharges like sprites, ELVES, TIGERs, TROLLs, Blue jets, etc., it seems that they're associated with good old garden variety lightning! High energy discharges, z-pinched, with plenty of relativistic electrons to go around, I'm sure...
The RHESSI science nugget states:
Could it be as simple as "gamma rays are evidence for high energy discharges?"
Might the long-versus-short gamma ray flashes conundrum be solved by something as simple as electrodynamics? (Okay, it's not simple by any stretch, but you get the idea; perhaps 'run-of-the-mill' is a better term.)
The COSMOS article states:
Could the answer be as simple as a higher energy discharge will transfer more energy more quickly and produce higher energy gamma rays, whereas a lower energy discharge will take longer to transfer its energy and produce lower energy gamma rays? Seems a more elegant solution than what amounts to "banging rocks together" (or smashing 'neutron stars' together).
One might take cues from the work of Bernard Vonnegut:
(Stabilization of a High-Voltage Discharge by a Vortex.)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1960JAtS...17..468V
Insofar is it was found that an arc discharge is radio noisy and only extends so far, however upon spinning up a vortex, the discharge can be extended over across a longer park gap, stepped down from arc mode plasma to glow mode plasma and the radio noise dies off. Is a similar process occurring with respect to gamma rays? Seems like a discharge with a larger spark gap and/or lower current density would produce a longer discharge (given the same initial charges) and a less energetic emission spectrum. Likewise, a shorter spark gap would probably enable a higher current to flow (on account of the increased electric field between charged bodies) and a more energetic spectrum to be output.
Granted it would require some fundamental reconsideration of existing models. However, more options is better than fewer, in my estimation.
Trying to wrap the human
Trying to wrap the human mind around what is out there in the far reaches of space creating such a powerful burst of light and energy and apply it to something we can understand is a fascinating puzzle in of itself. - Bankruptcy Law Firm in Las Vegas