一个黑洞遇到了一颗中子星，就像吃豆人一样吞噬了它

一个黑洞遇到了一颗中子星，就像吃豆人一样吞噬了它

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.

大约9亿年前，在一个遥远的星系中，一个黑洞和一颗中子星相遇。这对中子星来说并不顺利。

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马·辛普森——它们吃东西、打嗝和打盹的永恒规律不会受到太多干扰。

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.

你可能认为中子星不会那么容易坠落。毕竟，这些是恒星的超高密度残骸，正如美国宇航局所说，可以把2.5个太阳的质量压成一个城市大小的球。

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.

但是这颗中子星从舱口掉了下去。

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

只剩下打嗝了。或者，用不那么豪迈的术语来说，引力波。

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

至少这是一个名为S190814bv的新记录事件告诉我们的故事。

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.

据澳大利亚国立大学的科学家记录，这些引力波——主要是由重大宇宙事件引起的空间结构中的涟漪——现在才到达我们这里。

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.

事实上，他们声称这是第一次记录到这些宇宙重量级之间的碰撞。尽管这可能并不是一场激烈的争论——首席研究员苏珊·斯科特将黑洞比作吃豆人“瞬间将恒星熄灭”——但真正的故事发生在花了数亿年时间才到达这里的涟漪中。

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.

研究人员依靠美国先进的激光干涉仪引力波天文台(LIGO)和欧洲著名的室女座引力波天文台(Virgo)收集的数据。

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

它们都对引力波高度敏感，收集了大量关于这一事件的数据，而全球科学界仍在仔细研究这一事件。

"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."

加州大学圣克鲁兹分校的天文学家瑞安·福利告诉《科学预警》:“这就像圣诞节前夜。”“我只是在等着看树下有什么。”

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.

如果这是天文学家的圣诞节，那么圣诞老人的雪橇只用了9亿年就到达了这里。至少，这就是引力波目前所显示的。但还有很多事情要做。

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

斯科特说:“根据这一经验，我们非常有信心刚刚探测到一个黑洞吞噬了一颗中子星。”

"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，有一种微小但有趣的可能性是，被吞噬的物体是一个非常轻的黑洞——比我们所知的宇宙中任何其他黑洞都轻得多。那将是一个真正了不起的安慰奖。”