Italy’s Virgo is making headlines. For the first time, gravitational waves and light emissions from the same event have been directly observed, and for the first time, this event is the merger of two neutron stars, an event that involves the release of enormous amounts of energy and the dispersion of elements such as gold and platinum. The discovery is announced at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, and published in Science and Nature. In addition to clarifying some effects related to the production of gravitational waves, the new findings confirm the existence of kilonovae and provide new evidence for the theory that gamma-ray bursts, the most energetic phenomenon in the Universe, are produced by the merger (coalescence) of two neutron stars. The parallel use of gravitational wave observatories (the American LIGOs, but especially the Italian Virgo, which allows us to determine the region of the sky from which the explosion originates) and ground-based and orbiting telescopes also opens up new opportunities for more easily locating large cosmic events, quickly and with greater precision (multi-messenger astronomy).
