Scientists have obtained the best view so far of the most powerful type of cosmic explosion, which happened this time in our cosmological “backyard.” Using
A typical gamma-ray burst usually takes place 20 billion light years away, but this one was observed only one billion light years away – giving scientists what they call a “front row” seat to the blast. “We could observe the afterglow for several days and to unprecedented gamma-ray energies,” DESY’s Andrew Taylor said.
This comparatively shorter distance meant that scientists could see the ‘colours’ – photon energies – of the radiation. The GRB had a spectrum up to an energy of 3.3 tera-electronvolts, which is approximately one trillion times as energetic as the photons of visible light.
For three days following the explosion, scientists were still able to track the afterglow – with findings that rewrite what scientists previously thought about radiation.
In 2019, astronomers detected one of the most energetically extreme cosmological events ever observed: a faraway exploding star that produced jets of radiation in a gamma-ray burst. A new analysis of the event has raised questions about prevailing theories on gamma-ray bursts and other violent occurrences in the universe.
Scientists have gained the best view yet of the brightest explosions in the universe: A specialised observatory in Namibia has recorded the most energetic radiation and longest gamma-ray afterglow of a so-called gamma-ray burst to date. The observations with the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) challenge the idea of how gamma-rays are produced in these colossal stellar explosions which are the birth cries of black holes, as the international team reports in the journal Science.