Are you ready to witness the greatest light show in the universe? Buckle up and get ready to be amazed! On August 17, 2017, a spectacular event occurred 130 million light-years away from us. Two giant stars collided, creating a cosmic explosion that gave rise to something new and magnificent. This event is now known as a Killa Nova and was witnessed for the first time by astronomers who could see its light and hear its gravitational thunder.

Thanks to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), we were able to record this incredible event. This groundbreaking laboratory, consisting of two L-shaped detectors spanning kilometers, recorded a ripple in the fabric of space-time. The signal captured was longer and different from any others previously seen, lasting nearly 100 seconds. We now have the ability to both see and hear the sound of the universe.

But the excitement doesn’t stop there. NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor and the European Integral Space Telescope also recorded this rare event. The European Virgo, a cousin of LIGO, couldn’t detect anything, but it provided essential information on the location of the event, narrowing it down to an area in the Hydra constellation with approximately 50 galaxies.

Urgent emails went out to observatories worldwide to hunt for the afterglow. Telescopes began searching for any anomalies, and within 45 minutes, astronomers were able to pinpoint a bright new object in NGC 4990 3. It was the violent merger of two super-dense neutron stars.

As these neutron stars spun closer together, they gave off gravitational waves that eventually collided with a flash of gamma rays, resulting in a Killa Nova. This collision produced magnetic fields a billion times stronger than our Sun, which swirled around the crash site, quickly organizing themselves into polar jets that stimulated the gamma-ray bursts. Newly liberated subatomic particles bombarded the shredding star layers, creating new heavy elements and blasting them into interstellar space.

This extraordinary event happened 130 million years ago, during a time when the first flowering plants were just blossoming, and newly evolving birds had recently split from dinosaurs. As the light from the Killa Nova finally reached Earth, the Hubble Space Telescope watched the glow at least 70 different times.

The collision of two super-dense neutron stars is a rare event, and we were fortunate enough to witness it in all its glory.