Praise the Universe! Pretty awesome stuff. I know they had talked for years about a collision like this and trying to observe one.Years ago astronomers had observed what they had good evidence to be a blackhole and neutron star collision, but this itself is something very different. Blackholes by their very nature tend to obscure things. Two neutron stars not so much, as this shows.
I remember when I was a teen a common idea about the short gamma ray bursts was tied to hypothetical hyper novas, the idea of nuetron-blackhole or nuetron-nuetron star collisions didn't have as much traction. Good to see it finally solved. Only thing I'd point out about the article is it didn't distinguish between
short and long gamma ray bursts but obviously it was going for the larger picture, hence it's mentioning of that in passing.
So much progress has been made in Astronomy in the last 20 years it's insane. We know things people didn't imagine figuring out in their lifetime. It's funny to read a book from the 80's or 90's dismissing "planet X" but then fast forward to after 2000 and we know about dozens of dwarf planets almost the size of Pluto floating around there (Sedna, Eris, ect).
