The ground just shook.
Sunday a gamma-ray burst (GRB)caused the class of most powerful explosions in the universe gamma rays and X-ray wave to sweep the earth. It was also the brightest, perhaps the most brilliant, explosion of its nature ever recorded. It was an event This was reported in the Astronomers Telegram.
In a breath-taking press release, NASA highlighted that detectors all over the planet, including NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and the Wind spacecraft, captured it.
Gamma-ray bursts are among the most powerful releases of energy in the universe. Their reasons may be slightly different, but they are usually related to these black holes. Some may arise during mergers neutron stars to create a black hole or when a neutron star and a black hole merge. Because they are so energetic, even gamma-ray bursts from the other side of the universe can often be detected by astronomers on Earth.
Gamma rays are the most energetic photons in the electromagnetic spectrum, much more powerful than X-rays, and this cancer if one is exposed to them at high levels. Space is full gamma raysAlthough few reach the Earth’s surface, the atmosphere absorbs the vast majority before they can harm us.
However, a large enough gamma-ray burst could theoretically knock a planet out of its atmosphere and cause mass destruction. Indeed, a gamma-ray burst around 443 million years ago is believed to have triggered the Ordovician extinction. Fortunately for modern humans, no GRB in recent memory has been close enough to Earth to have this effect. About 30 percent of them are short bursts lasting only a few seconds, while most of the rest usually last several minutes.
It was a GRB first discovered Accidentally discovered by scientists in the 1960s, and even then, they realized that these explosions would produce energy for the entire 10 billion year life of our Sun. More recently, the explosive event, now officially named GRB 221009A, traveled about 1.9 billion light-years from the direction of the Sagitta constellation to reach Earth. Coincidentally, it coincided with the gathering of gamma-ray astronomers for the 10th Fermi Symposium in Johannesburg, South Africa. Needless to say, they were impressed by the symbolically rich timing.
Judy Racusin, Fermi assistant project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “It’s safe to say that this meeting really started with a bang – everyone is talking about it,” said a commenter at the conference.
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Preliminary analysis shows that Fermi’s Large Area Telescope (LAT) space telescope was able to detect the pulse of radiation within about 10 hours. Astronomers believe that the pulse was formed in a new black hole created by the collapse of a massive star under its own weight. As a result, astronomers believe that the information obtained by measuring this radioactive pulse could provide new insights into how black holes form and the dynamics of stellar collapse, among other things.
Because it is believed to release 18 teraelectronvolts of energy, scientists are preparing to call it a precedent, given that no previous gamma-ray burst has been known to exceed 10 teraelectronvolts.
“This burst is closer than typical GRBs, which is exciting because it allows us to detect many details that would otherwise be too faint to see,” Roberta Pillera, a member of the Fermi LAT Collaboration and PhD student at the Polytechnic University of Bari, Italy, said in a press release about the burst. . “But it’s also one of the most energetic and luminous explosions ever seen, regardless of distance, making it doubly exciting.”
A number of mass media covering the explosion described it in historical language. Because it is believed to release 18 teraelectronvolts of energy, scientists are preparing to call it a precedent, given that no previous gamma-ray burst has been known to exceed 10 teraelectronvolts. Space.com described it as “the most powerful flash of light ever seen”. Phys.org calling it possibly “the most powerful explosion ever recorded”. Northwestern University graduate student Jillian Rastinejad, who led one of two independent teams using the Southern Telescope of the Chilean Twins to study the event, described it’s like “BOAT” or the Brightest of All Time, because when you look at the thousands of bursts detected by gamma-ray telescopes since the 1990s, it stands out.
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