Star Wars
It seemed like business as usual for astronomer Julie McEnery when she got an alert last Aug. 17 from the Fermi Space Telescope about a gamma ray burst — brilliant flashes of light in the night sky strong enough to briefly outshine the sun. As the alert went out to other astronomers around the world, she sat back to wait for the data to download.
But this particular burst turned out to be special. It occurred less than two seconds after a powerful ripple in spacetime known as a gravitational wave reached detectors on Earth.
A half-hour later, McEnery received notice that a collaborative effort known as LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) had detected a telltale audible chirp in its data at about the same time, indicating a gravitational wave. McEnery, a project scientist with the Fermi telescope, understood the significance immediately: Only the collision, or merger, of two neutron stars could have produced this distinct combination of signals.
“Usually, science results emerge a bit more slowly as you analyze data and gradually realize you’re potentially onto something,” McEnery said. “But this was, like, boom! I couldn’t believe it was happening. It was the best morning ever.”
Ecstatic, she bounced down the corridors of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland to share her excitement — only to
