A new study suggests that explosive events in space have the potential to temporarily switch off the natural shield that protects us from harmful solar radiation.
The brightest gamma-ray burst ever seen and detected impacted Earth s atmosphere. It came from a supernova and may reveal why Earth has had mass extinctions in its past.
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Bengaluru: Once upon a time, billions of years ago, a star died. It let out a pulse of extremely high energy a gamma ray burst (GRB), as the astronomers call it that was detected on Earth just last year. Lasting less than a second, it was the shortest of its kind ever observed.
And it appears to have challenged some existing models that govern the way these bursts are seen.
Astronomers looking through NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope observed a pulse of extremely high energy in the form of a GRB on 26 August 2020. The GRB, the astronomers say, is the shortest known to have been caused by the death of a star.