(ORDO NEWS) — Shine bright like… gamma rays?
A gamma-ray burst that recently hit our solar system was so bright that it temporarily blinded spacecraft using gamma rays, according to NASA.
Scientists say a gamma-ray burst (GRB), the most powerful type of explosion in the universe, was 70 times brighter than any previously recorded event.
They called it “BOAT”, or “the brightest of all time”.
What is a gamma ray burst?
The splash is, in fact, the first breath of a black hole. And it’s spectacular.
As a supermassive star nears the end of its life when its core no longer produces enough fuel to support its mass it collapses under its own weight, forming a black hole.
During this process, two things happen: first, the collapse causes an explosion called a supernova. Second, the resulting black hole is born in a massive cloud of residual gas and dust, where it quickly devours it all.
What happens next has been observed many times, but still remains a scientific mystery, because why this happens: a black hole emits two powerful jets of high-energy gamma radiation, moving at a speed close to the speed of light, in opposite directions.
These cosmic eruptions last only a few seconds, but are so bright that astronomers have documented about 12,000 gamma-ray bursts. And this is one of those jets that hit the solar system last fall.
The brightest gamma-ray burst of all time
The burst, classified as GRB 221009A, was recorded on October 9, 2022. instruments, they couldn’t accurately capture it, so scientists weren’t sure how bright the burst was when it first hit our planet.
Over the past few months, scientists around the world, including in the US, China, have collected data from other instruments to measure and remeasure the brightness of the GRB, finding that it was 70 times brighter than any other GRB event in registered history.
The researchers also looked at the likelihood of a similar event happening again and reported that things like this only happen once every 10,000 years.
“GRB 221009A was probably the brightest burst of X-rays and gamma rays since the dawn of human civilization,” said Eric Burns, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge. This was reported by NASA.
Oddly enough, the planes themselves were not the most powerful on record. What made the gamma-ray burst so bright was that the jets were narrow and aimed straight at Earth. So, we got a complete picture of him – like a deer in the headlights.
Other gamma-ray bursts are not aimed directly at the Earth, so we do not register as much of their radiation, and they appear dimmer.
But the astronomers were not finished. They hope this gamma-ray burst will help unravel the mystery of why black holes spew gamma-ray bursts.
One theory already exists that the jets were powered by a magnetic field, which the black hole intensified as it began spinning. (Yes, black holes can spin.)
Additional observations are planned over the next few months with the James Webb and Hubble Space Telescopes.
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