last october, Astronomers witnessed Fleeting, extremely bright gamma rays explode in the distant universe. Dubbed the brightest BOAT of all time, a team of scientists has now reported the unusual structure of a gamma-ray burst jet.
Gamma ray bursts are some of the largest pyrotechnic displays in the universe. They are massive explosions in the universe that emit – you guessed it – gamma rays, the most energetic type of electromagnetic radiation. It can be emitted by collapsing stars and the mergers between them; Basically, when massive objects interact, large “booms” occur.
The boat (officially named GRB 221009A) About 70 times brighter from any previously recorded gamma-ray burst. It occurred in a galaxy about 2 billion light-years from Earth. Astronomers think it happens about once every 10,000 years.
Researchers today announced new details about the structure of the gamma ray jet.A huge column of material is emitted from the source of the explosion, believed to be a massive star collapsing into a black hole. was their research published in the advancement of science.
“For a long time, we thought of airplanes as being shaped like ice cream cones,” Alexander van der Horst, a George Washington University physicist and co-author of the study, said in a university statement. “However, some of the gamma-ray bursts in recent years, especially the work presented here, show that we need more complex models and detailed computer simulations of the gamma-ray bursts,” van der Horst added.
Jets of matter accelerating to nearly the speed of light equal the trajectory of massive objects in the universe. Quasars and pulsars both spew out such jets, BThe boat’s jets seem to have a shape that lengthens their glow, as we’ve seen from terrestrial observatories.
Brendan O’Connor, a graduate student at GWU and the study’s lead author, said in the same release that the boat could be “a Rosetta stone of tall GRBs,” insofar as it changes the way astrophysicists understand the thrusts from collapsing stars.
Long-duration gamma-ray bursts are those that last longer than two seconds; The boat lasted about 10 hours. According to ScienceNews. Longer bursts are generally associated with stellar death, while shorter bursts are mostly associated with stellar mergers and the formation of black holes, According to NASA.
Although the boat was unusually bright, it was not the largest explosion in space. Last month , Astronomers announced the discovery A multi-year burst called AT2021lwx. They believe that the explosion is caused by interactions between the black hole and the gas cloud surrounding it.
Further observations are sure to clarify the nature of more complex explosions in the universe, as they have helped astrophysicists discern the sides of the boat.
Future observatories — such as the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile — will help researchers image such outbursts the moment they arise, giving astrophysicists precious data on even the most fleeting events.
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