“The completeness of this picture from the beginning to the end is unprecedented,” said Columbia University physics professor Szabolcs Marka. “There are many, many extraordinary discoveries within the discovery.”
Brian Metzger, an astrophysicist at Columbia University, comments on the discovery of a neutron-star collision which produced a radioactive “kilonova” that forged hundreds of Earths’ worth of platinum, gold, silver, and other atoms.
The effort could prove transformational for science and medicine by laying the groundwork for tailored therapies that target specific malfunctioning cell types, offering hope that spinal-cord disease and injury may one day be more effectively treated, or even cured.