Keerthi Kunnumkai

Two neutron stars collide, and the space around them ripples like the surface of a pond after a stone is thrown. Huge gravitational wave detectors catch these ripples. If the collision also launches a narrow beam of gamma rays, space telescopes see it as a short gamma-ray burst.

A shockwave erupts from the star's surface, and for a brief moment, a blinding flash of ultraviolet and X-rays is born. This very event, named EP260321a, was spotted by the Einstein space telescope in March 2026. The light took about 450 million years to reach Earth.