A team of researchers scrutinizing the brightest gamma - ray burst in at least 10,000 years identify a unique emission line that it believes could reveal some uttermost purgative at the eye of the burst .
The squad ’s research , publishedthis workweek inScience , interrogates an emission assembly line that appeared about 280 arcsecond after the gamma - ray burst start .
“ When I first saw that signal , it give me goosebumps , ” said Maria Edvige Ravasio , a researcher at Radboud University in the Netherlands and lead author of the enquiry , in a NASArelease . “ Our psychoanalysis since then shows it to be the first high - confidence emission line ever seen in 50 years of studying GRBs . ”
An illustration of a gamma-ray burst emitted by a collapsing star.© NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
What was this gamma-ray burst?
The gamma - ray burst was a particularly vast space explosionthought to be causedby the smart as a whip death of a distant star . Its full name is GRB 221009A , but it ’s more unremarkably known as the BOAT , or the bright Of All Time . That ’s not literally straight , but it ’s emphatically the brightest that ’s ever been record .
The burst contains a trove of information about the star ’s flop , so brilliantly fork over that the X- and gamma - ray temporarily overwhelmed most blank space - based observatories . But nearly two years since the issue , investigator are still learning new selective information about the BOAT .
“ While some former study have cover possible grounds for absorption and discharge feature film in other GRBs , subsequent scrutiny revealed that all of these could just be statistical fluctuations . What we see in the BOAT is unlike , ” said Om Sharan Salafia , a researcher at INAF - Brera Observatory and carbon monoxide - generator of the composition , in the same release . “ We ’ve determined that the odds this feature is just a haphazardness wavering are less than one prospect in half a billion . ”
A graphic showing the BOAT’s energy compared to the previous five longest-known gamma-ray bursts. © Graphic: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and Adam Goldstein (USRA)
A brief history of the BOAT
TheBOAT was first spottedby the National Science Foundation ’s NOIRLab scope Gemini South in October 2022 . investigator determined the event occurred about 2.4 billion lite - years away , and distance - based X- and Vasco da Gamma - ray telescopes were rapidly overwhelmed by the splendor of the event .
The result wasconfirmed as the BOATin March 2023 . The burst is not really the brightest of all metre , but “ likely the brightest burst at disco biscuit - electron beam and gamma - ray energies to come about since human civilization began , ” as one astrophysicist order . The BOAT was determined to be a one - in-10,000 - year issue . A research teampublishedits Adam - ray watching of the burst inThe Astrophysical Journal Letters .
That June , another team analyzed the structure of theBOAT ’s gamma ray jet . The astronomers conceive the construction of the volley could supply a blueprint to understand Vasco da Gamma beam bursts from other bursts of muscularity spewed by give way wiz .
Researcherspublished a more complete analysisof the BOAT ’s gamma - irradiation energy end product in November 2023 . That study found the whizz that bore the gravy boat was 20 time heavier than the Sun , and the burn endure hundreds of seconds . in the end , the squad identified over 140 da Gamma - ray in the event that outperform 3 teraelectronvolts . The finding “ challenges the received model of GRB afterglows , ” one research worker tell Gizmodo .
What did the researchers find?
The emanation business line spotted by the squad hold on for about 40 second , with a tip free energy of about 12 million electronvolts . The research squad believes it was cause by collision between electrons and positrons — their antimatter similitude .
“ When an electron and a antielectron collide , they annihilate , ” said study co - author Gor Oganesyan , a researcher at Gran Sasso Science Institute and Gran Sasso National Laboratory , in the same release . “ Because we ’re looking into the super acid , where subject is moving at near light speed , this emission becomes greatly blueshifted and labor toward much high energies . ”
According to the NASA article , so as to have the summit push abide by by the team , the negatron - antielectron pairs must have been traveling towards us at 99.9 % the speed of light . The BOAT ’s utmost explosiveness was already well - known , but the young research puts that dynamism into position .
What now for the BOAT?
Scientists are still sieve through the volatile aftermath of the 2022 detonation . Just this April , a teamused the Webb Space Telescopeto study the burst ’s origin and notice it was triggered by a supernova : a ace ’s brilliant , volatile death . The team saw no signs of heavy elements from the BOAT , leave the origins of those constituent in the universe an open interrogation .
Further study of the BOAT ’s side effect and continued observations of other Vasco da Gamma - ray sources could shed luminance on these events , some of the most acute in our universe .
Antimatterelectronsgamma ray
Daily Newsletter
Get the best technical school , scientific discipline , and culture news program in your inbox daily .
News from the hereafter , delivered to your present tense .
You May Also Like
