Space scientists say they have identified what might be the "perfect explosion," but much work remains to fully explain the observation. The explosion, called a kilonova, was observed in 2017 and has been studied carefully since then. Astronomers say a kilonova happens when two neutron stars crash into each other. The rapidly growing explosion that they described went beyond the researchers’ expectations. The event led to the formation of a black hole: an object with so much gravity that even light cannot escape it. The two neutron stars had a combined mass of 2.7 times that of our sun. They orbited each other for billions of years before crashing into each other at a high speed and exploding.

太空科学家表示，他们已经确定了可能是“完美爆炸”的原因，但要充分解释这一观察结果还有很多工作要做。 2017 年观察到这种称为千新星的爆炸，并从那时起对其进行了仔细研究。天文学家说，当两颗中子星相互碰撞时，就会发生千新星爆发。他们描述的快速增长的爆炸超出了研究人员的预期。这一事件导致了黑洞的形成：一个引力如此之大的物体，连光都无法逃脱。这两颗中子星的总质量是我们太阳的 2.7 倍。它们相互绕行了数十亿年，然后高速相撞并爆炸。

This event took place in a galaxy called NGC 4993. The galaxy is at least 140 million light years away from Earth in the direction of the constellation Hydra. A light year is the distance light travels in a year. Astronomers used the European Southern Observatory's Chile-based Very Large Telescope to study the kilonova.The existence of kilonova explosions was proposed in 1974. The theory was confirmed in 2013. But astronomers did not know what they looked like until one was identified in 2017 and studied carefully. "It is a perfect explosion in several ways. It is beautiful...in the simplicity of the shape, and in its physical" importance, said Albert Sneppen of the Cosmic Dawn Center in Copenhagen, Denmark. Sneppen was the lead writer of the research published in Nature.

这一事件发生在一个名为 NGC 4993 的星系中。该星系在九头蛇星座的方向上距离地球至少有 1.4 亿光年。一光年是光在一年中传播的距离。天文学家利用欧洲南方天文台位于智利的甚大望远镜研究千新星。1974 年提出了千新星爆炸的存在。该理论于 2013 年得到证实。但天文学家直到 2017 年才发现一颗新星并不知道它们长什么样。仔细研究。丹麦哥本哈根宇宙黎明中心的 Albert Sneppen 说：“从几个方面来说，这是一次完美的爆炸。它很美……在形状的简单性和物理上的”重要性。 Sneppen 是发表在《自然》杂志上的这项研究的主要作者。

The researchers had expected the explosion to look flat and round, with a jet of material coming out of it. "To be honest, we are really going back to the drawing board with this," said study co-writer Darach Watson of the Cosmic Dawn Center. "Given the extreme nature of the physical conditions...there may well be fundamental physics here that we don't understand yet," Watson added. The two neutron stars began their lives as large normal stars in a two-star system called a binary system. Each exploded and collapsed after running out of fuel, leaving behind a small and dense center, or core, only 20 kilometers across. The neutron stars then slowly drew nearer to each other. They were then stretched out and pulled apart because of the power of the other's gravity. Their inner parts crashed into each other at about 25 percent of the speed of light, creating the most intense magnetic fields in the universe. The explosion released the luminosity of a billion suns for a few days.

研究人员原以为爆炸看起来是扁平的、圆形的，并有一股物质从中喷出。 “老实说，我们真的要回到绘图板，”宇宙黎明中心的研究合著者 Darach Watson 说。 “鉴于物理条件的极端性质......这里很可能存在我们尚不了解的基础物理学，”沃森补充道。这两颗中子星在称为双星系统的双星系统中作为大型普通恒星开始它们的生命。每一个都在燃料耗尽后爆炸和坍塌，留下一个小而致密的中心或核心，只有 20 公里宽。然后中子星彼此慢慢靠近。然后由于对方的引力，他们被拉伸并拉开。它们的内部部分以大约 25% 的光速相互碰撞，产生了宇宙中最强烈的磁场。爆炸释放了十亿个太阳几天的光度。

The two briefly formed a single massive neutron star that then collapsed to form a black hole. The outer parts of the neutron stars, however, were stretched into long streamers, with some material flying off into space. During the process, the densities and temperatures were so strong that they created heavy elements, including gold, platinum, arsenic, uranium and iodine. Sneppen used the term challenge, meaning a difficult task or problem, to talk about the findings, which are hard understand. "This is fundamentally astonishing, and an exciting challenge for any theoreticians and numerical simulations," Sneppen said. "The game is on."

两者短暂地形成了一颗巨大的中子星，然后坍塌形成了一个黑洞。然而，中子星的外部被拉伸成长长的流光，一些物质飞向太空。在此过程中，密度和温度如此之高，以至于产生了重元素，包括金、铂、砷、铀和碘。 Sneppen 使用术语挑战，意思是一项艰巨的任务或问题，来谈论难以理解的发现。 “对于任何理论家和数值模拟来说，这从根本上来说是惊人的和令人兴奋的挑战，”Sneppen 说。 “比赛开始了。”