Idaho Skies Transcript for November 8th and 9th

RACHEL
Welcome to Idaho Skies for November 8th and 9th. We’re your hosts, Rachel...

PAUL
...and Paul.

RACHEL
Astronomers announced one of the greatest astronomical discoveries last month.

PAUL
It was the detection of gravity waves from a collision of two orbiting neutron stars.

RACHEL
Neutron stars are the remains of very massive stars, but stars not quite massive enough to collapse into black holes.

PAUL
In 1915, Einstein predicted that the force of gravity takes energy away from massive orbiting objects.

RACHEL
So as these neutron stars continued to orbit each other, they lost kinetic energy and slowly spiraled into each other.

PAUL
Fortunately, gravity is so weak between Earth and the moon that their orbits shrink too slowly to detect, even after billions of years.

RACHEL
The gravitational field between neutron stars is so powerful that it shrunk their orbits quite quickly compared to the lifetime of a star.

PAUL
Rapidly orbiting neutron stars create an ever changing gravitational field.

RACHEL
And this changing gravitational field creates expanding wrinkles in space-time.

PAUL
All matter immersed within the passage space-time wrinkles vibrates back and forth almost like fishing bobs floating on water waves.

RACHEL
Scientists can measure those vibrations by measuring the distances between mirrors inside a vacuum.

PAUL
Those vibrations are tiny by the time they reach Earth, in fact, far less than the width of an atom.

RACHEL
But a device called an interferometer can detect vibrations that small.

PAUL
The detection of gravity waves last August told astronomers where to aim their telescopes before the light of the collision reached Earth.

RACHEL
Which is the first time astronomers have observed an astronomical event using both the electromagnetic spectrum and gravity.

PAUL
That’s Idaho Skies for the 8th and 9th of November.

RACHEL
Be sure to follow us on Twitter at Idaho Skies for this week’s event reminders and sky maps.

For Idaho Skies this is Rachel...

PAUL
...and Paul.

RACHEL
Dark skies and bright stars.