Question: Why is it important to study the collisions of neutron stars?

Laurence Datrier answered on 18 Jun 2019:

It can tell us a lot about neutron stars themselves (they’re quite exotic objects and there’s a lot of physics we don’t understand around neutron stars!), and it tells us about the kind of environment they’re in. The collision of neutron stars is also where a lot of heavy elements you find on Earth are formed, like gold. So studying neutron stars tells us about our own planet too!