New simulations performed on a NASA supercomputer are providing scientists with the most comprehensive look yet into the maelstrom of interacting magnetic structures around city-sized neutron stars in the moments before they crash. The team identified potential signals emitted during the stars’ final moments that may be detectable by future observatories.
“Just before neutron stars crash, the highly magnetized, plasma-filled regions around them, called magnetospheres, start to interact strongly. We studied the last several orbits before the merger, when the entwined magnetic fields undergo rapid and dramatic changes, and modeled potentially observable high-energy signals,” said lead scientist Dimitrios Skiathas, a graduate student at the University of Patras, Greece, who is conducting research for the Southeastern Universities Research Association in Washington at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
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New supercomputer simulations explore the tangled magnetic structures around merging neutron stars. Called magnetospheres, the highly magnetized, plasma-filled regions start to interact as the city-sized stars close on each other toward their final orbits. Magnetic field lines can connect both stars, break, and reconnect, while currents surge through surrounding plasma moving at nearly the speed of light. The simulations show that as these systems merge to produce one kind of gamma-ray burst — the universe’s most powerful class of explosions — they emit tell-tale X-rays and gamma rays that future observatories should be able to detect. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
A paper describing the findings published Nov. 20, 2025, in the The Astrophysical Journal.
Neutron star mergers produce a particular type of GRB (gamma-ray burst), the most powerful class of explosions in the cosmos.
Most investigations have naturally concentrated on the spectacular mergers and their aftermaths, which produce near-light-speed jets that emit gamma rays, ripples in space-time called gravitati …