In August 2017, LIGO and its Italian-French partner, Virgo, made a discovery as important as its historic first detection of gravitational waves in 2015 from two colliding black holes. They detected waves from two colliding neutron stars, which ignited a spectacular cosmic light show that was seen by 70 space-based telescopes and observatories on earth. It became the most observed celestial event in history. The results were spectacular -- among other things, it proved that many heavy elements we have on earth, such a GOLD, came from the collisions of neutron stars hundreds of millions of years go.
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