Neutron star merger

A neutron star merger is the stellar collision of neutron stars. When two neutron stars fall into mutual orbit, they gradually spiral inward due to gravitational radiation. When they finally meet, their merger leads to the formation of either a more massive neutron star, or—if the mass of the remnant exceeds the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit—a black hole. The merger can create a magnetic field that is trillions of times stronger than that of Earth in a matter of one or two milliseconds. These events are believed to create short gamma-ray bursts.

The merger of neutron stars momentarily creates an environment of such extreme neutron flux that the r-process can occur. This reaction accounts for the nucleosynthesis of around half of the isotopes in elements heavier than iron.

The mergers also produce kilonovae, which are transient sources of isotropic longer wave electromagnetic radiation due to the radioactive decay of heavy r-process nuclei that are produced and ejected during the merger process. Kilonovae had been discussed as a possible r-process site since the reaction was first proposed in 1999, but the mechanism became widely accepted after multi-messenger event GW170817 was observed in 2017.

Observed mergers
On 17 August 2017, the LIGO and Virgo interferometers observed GW170817, a gravitational wave associated with the merger of two neutron stars in NGC 4993, an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Hydra. GW170817 co-occurred with a short (roughly 2-second long) gamma-ray burst, GRB 170817A, first detected 1.7 seconds after the GW merger signal, and a visible light observational event first observed 11 hours afterwards, SSS17a.

The co-occurrence of GW170817 with GRB 170817A in both space and time strongly implies that neutron star mergers create short gamma-ray bursts. The subsequent detection of Swope Supernova Survey event 2017a (SSS17a) in the area where GW170817 and GRB 170817A were known to have occurred—and its having the expected characteristics of a kilonova—strongly imply that neutron star mergers are responsible for kilonovae as well.

In February 2018, the Zwicky Transient Facility began to track neutron star events via gravitational wave observation, as evidenced by "systematic samples of tidal disruption events". Later that year, astronomers reported that GRB 150101B, a gamma-ray burst event detected in 2015, may be directly related to GW170817 and associated with the merger of two neutron stars. The similarities between the two events, in terms of gamma ray, optical and x-ray emissions, as well as to the nature of the associated host galaxies, are "striking", suggesting the two separate events may both be the result of the merger of neutron stars, and both may be a kilonova, which may be more common in the universe than previously understood, according to the researchers.

Also in October 2018, scientists presented a new way to use information from gravitational wave events (especially those involving the merger of neutron stars like GW170817) to determine the Hubble constant, which establishes the rate of expansion of the universe. The two earlier methods for finding the Hubble constant—one based on redshifts and another based on the cosmic distance ladder—disagree by about 10%. This difference, the Hubble tension, might be reconciled by using kilonovae as another type of standard candle.

In April 2019, the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave observatories announced the detection of a candidate event that is, with a probability 99.94%, the merger of two neutron stars. Despite extensive follow-up observations, no electromagnetic counterpart could be identified.

In 2023, an observation of the kilonova GRB 230307A was published, including likely observations of the spectra of tellurium and lanthanide elements.

XT2 (magnetar)
In 2019, analysis of data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory revealed another binary neutron star merger at a distance of 6.6 billion light years, an x-ray signal called XT2. The merger produced a magnetar; its emissions could be detected for several hours.

Effect on Earth
The cosmic rays emitted by a neutron star merger occurring any less than 10 parsecs from Earth would result in conclusive human extinction. By comparison, for short Gamma Ray Bursts (sGRB) the lethal zone extends hundreds of parsecs. Other sources such as near-earth supernovae emit high-energy photons in the form of gamma rays and x-rays; these would destroy Earth's ozone layer, exposing the population to fatal levels of UVB radiation from the Sun.

Compared to these, neutron star mergers are unique in that they emit multiple sources of harmful radiation, including emission from the radioactive decay of heavy elements scattered by the sGRB cocoon, the sGRB afterglow itself, and cosmic rays accelerated by the blast. In order of arrival, the photons are first after the merger, and the cosmic rays arrive hundreds to thousands of years later. . The ejected material sweeps up the interstellar medium and creates a supernova-remnant-like bubble holding a lethal dose of cosmic rays. If the Earth were to be engulfed by the remnant, these cosmic rays—like the gamma rays—would deplete the ozone and could interact with the atmosphere, yielding weakly-interacting muons. The flux density of these generated particles would be sufficient to sterilize the planet, penetrating even deep into caves and underwater. The danger to life lies in the particles' ability to disrupt DNA, causing birth defects and mutations.

Relative to supernovae, binary neutron star (BNS) mergers influence a similar volume of space, but they are much rarer and have a stronger dependence on the orientation of the event with respect to Earth. Accordingly, the overall threat of a BNS event to human extinction is extremely low.

Distribution of Heavy Metals
Neutron star mergers are rare, so most stars will form out of gas clouds which have few r-process metals. Our own solar system, however, did form from a gas cloud enriched with heavy metals. This suggests that metals heavier than iron, such as the platinum group metals, the rare earth elements, and the radioactive elements will be rarer in most solar systems as compared to our own.