Paging my astrophysicist friends...

[major_clanger]

lebeautemps asks the following question:

Can someone please, in simple terms, describe the relationship between the following?

Binary stars, gamma ray burst, synchrotron radiation and muons.

And do all binary stars eventually collide?

Anyone better qualified than me to give her an answer?

Comments

[sharikkamur.livejournal.com]

Okay, here goes...

Binary star systems are those in which there are two stars orbiting each other. This is normally a stable configuration, but as the stars age and lose mass the orbits will change. Often the two stars will eventually crash into each other but not always - it depends on whether there are other objects nearby that can affect their orbits. One type of gamma ray burster is thought to occur when two neutron stars in a binary system collide. This is the minority of GRBs though, as most are thought to be narrow beams of energy released through synchrotron emission during supernova explosions.

Neutron stars are highly condensed objects with intense gravitational and magnetic fields. These magnetic fields are responsible for the generation of synchrotron radiation, produced by charged particles moving at speeds close to the speed of light within a strong magnetic field - these form the familiar 'searchlight' beams of energy detected from rotating neutron stars (known as 'pulsars'). Muons moving in a magnetic field will produce synchrotron radiation just as easily as will electrons, as muons are, in effect, 'heavy electrons'.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Just to expand on this...

Only binaries that are in close orbits will have any likelihood of colliding.

GRBs are thought to mostly be a special class of high mass star supernova, possibly involving the creation of a black hole, but they are not currently well understood.

Synchrotron radiation is a general class of radiation that comes from relativistic charged particles moving in a magnetic field. It does occur in pulsars, but also occurs in quasars, towards the centre of our own galaxy and in artificial synchrotron radiation sources such as the Diamond synchrotron near Didcot. Synchrotron radiation is characterized by its non-thermal, power law spectrum whose slope depends on the energy distribution of the relativistic electrons.

Muons are fundamental particles which are, as said above, effectively heavy electrons. They are produced in the upper atmosphere by cosmic rays.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

No, that's wrong. Muons are the elementary particles which make up cats.