Grandparents killed in wrong-way crash on Hwy. 401 identified
A 60-year-old man and a 55-year-old woman killed in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 earlier this week have been identified by the Consulate General of India in Toronto.
When a dead star plunges into an active star, expect an explosion of astronomical proportions that isn't supposed to happen yet.
Astronomers were able to work out this stellar puzzle after tracing an unusual burst of bright radio waves in 2017. The radio waves were captured by the Very Large Array Sky Survey, a collaborative effort to observe the night sky and search for radio wavelengths.
Scientists determined that the flare of radio waves was caused when a dead star, either a black hole or a neutron star, catastrophically collided with a companion star. The study was published in the journal Science last week.
"Massive stars usually explode as supernovae when they run out of nuclear fuel," said Gregg Hallinan, study author and professor of astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, in a statement. "But in this case, an invading black hole or neutron star has prematurely triggered its companion star to explode."
Astronomers have never been able to observe this process, so this marks the first time this type of supernova has been confirmed by scientists.
But some astronomical events, especially unusual ones, leave temporary calling cards. Radio transients are short, bright bursts of radio waves that fizzle out quickly, but capturing a glimpse of them at the right time can reveal the explosive nature of merging stars.
Caltech graduate student Dillon Dong noticed a particularly bright radio wave source in data from the Very Large Array Sky Survey, which was dubbed VT 1210+4956.
Dong's analysis of the event revealed that the energetic outburst came from a star, which was enveloped by a thick shell of gas. The star had shed the gas hundreds of years before. The bright burst occurred when the star exploded in a supernova. The exploded material interacted with the gas shell, triggering a bright burst of radio waves.
But Dong had more questions about when and why the star originally released its gas.
Another Caltech graduate student, Anna Ho, suggested that the radio transient should be compared with known bright X-ray events, which only appear for a few seconds.
Dong was able to find X-rays that appeared in the same spot as the bright radio transient, which meant they were probably created by the same thing.
"The X-ray transient was an unusual event -- it signalled that a relativistic jet was launched at the time of the explosion," Dong said. Relativistic jets are beams of energized matter that reach close to the speed of light.
"And the luminous radio glow indicated that the material from that explosion later crashed into a massive torus of dense gas that had been ejected from the star centuries earlier. These two events have never been associated with each other, and on their own they're very rare."
To understand the rare occurrence, the research team modelled the most likely event.
They believe that a leftover remnant of a star that previously exploded -- either a black hole or dense neutron star -- was orbiting another star. If it was a black hole, it was likely drawing off the star's atmosphere and pulling it out into space to create a gas shell.
The gravitational pull of this process also brought the dead star and the active star together. Then, the black hole crashed into the active star, which prematurely caused it to collapse in on itself and explode.
When the star collapsed, its core release a jet of material, creating the X-ray burst. The radio waves wouldn't be created until years later when the exploded material finally reached the gas shell.
It's not unusual for two stars to exist in a stable orbit that slowly brings the two objects together over time. In fact, this collision is what causes gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time.
But this collision created distinct X-ray and radio wave bursts -- which had been predicted, and now scientists have evidence that it can actually occur.
"We had ideas of what we might find in the VLA (Very Large Array) survey, but we were open to the possibility of finding things we didn't expect," Dong said.
"We created the conditions to discover something interesting by conducting loosely constrained, open-minded searches of large data sets and then taking into account all of the contextual clues we could assemble about the objects that we found," Dong said.
"During this process you find yourself pulled in different directions by different explanations, and you simply let nature tell you what's out there."
A 60-year-old man and a 55-year-old woman killed in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 earlier this week have been identified by the Consulate General of India in Toronto.
Three people have been arrested and charged in the killing of B.C. Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar – as authorities continue investigating potential connections to the Indian government.
Pius Suter scored with 1:39 left and the Vancouver Canucks advanced to the second round of the NHL playoffs with a 1-0 victory over the Nashville Predators on Friday night in Game 6.
TD Bank Group could be hit with more severe penalties than previously expected, says a banking analyst after a report that the investigation it faces in the U.S. is tied to laundering illicit fentanyl profits.
A Quebec man who pleaded guilty to threatening Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier François Legault has been sentenced to 20 months in jail.
RCMP say human remains found in a rural area in central Saskatchewan may have been there for a decade or more.
A source close to singer Britney Spears tells CNN that the pop star is 'home and safe' after she had a 'major fight' with her boyfriend on Wednesday night at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood.
As Wegovy becomes available to Canadians starting Monday, a medical expert is cautioning patients wanting to use the drug to lose weight that no medication is a ''magic bullet,' and the new medication is meant particularly for people who meet certain criteria related to obesity and weight.
Drew Carey took over as host of 'The Price Is Right' and hopes he’s there for life. 'I'm not going anywhere,' he told 'Entertainment Tonight' of the job he took over from longtime host Bob Barker in 2007.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.