This Powerful Gamma-Ray Blast Was the 'Brightest of All Time'
Astronomers are “in awe” of the high-energy explosion, probably caused by a giant star’s death
Will Sullivan
October 21, 2022 11:25 a.m.
The afterglow of the gamma-ray burst as captured by the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory's X-ray telescope. NASA/Swift/A. Beardmore (University of Leicester)
On October 9, astronomers detected a bright blast of light more energetic than they had ever seen, reports Space.com’s Tereza Pultarova. Promptly, observatories across the globe turned toward the source as scientists rushed to study the phenomenon.
The blast originated 2.4 billion light-years away from Earth, researchers say. Called a gamma-ray burst (GRB), the massive explosion emitted flares of high-energy X-ray and gamma radiation and was likely spurred by a gigantic star’s collapse, according to Inverse’s Kiona Smith.
Gamma-ray bursts are the universe’s most powerful class of explosions. And compared to all others previously detected, this one is thought to be brighter by a factor of ten, as Jillian Rastinejad, an astronomer at Northwestern University whose team observed the GRB on October 14, tells Live Science’s Robert Lea. Due to its tremendous glow, astronomers have been calling this event the “BOAT”—the brightest of all time.
“It’s a once-in-a-century event, maybe once in 1,000 years,” Brendan O’Connor, an astrophysicist at the University of Maryland and George Washington University, who led a second team studying the GRB, tells Space.com. “We’re just really in awe of this event and feeling very lucky to be able to study it.”
More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-powerful-gamma-ray-blast-was-the-brightest-of-all-time-180980971/