In a very short time, a gamma-ray burst can produce about ten times the energy produced by our sun combined in its entire ten billion year life.
This intense shortwave radiation is therefore one of the most powerful energy releases we know.
Now astronomers may have just detected the most powerful gamma ray burst ever recorded – up to 18 times more powerful than ever seen before.
Visible for many hours
This newly discovered gamma-ray burst has been named GRB 221009A and was detected, among other things, by the instruments of NASA’s Swift satellite and the Gemini South telescope, which monitors space from the Gerro Pachon mountain range in Chile.
Astronomers around the world have turned their telescopes in the direction to measure the glow after this great event.
The gamma-ray burst originates in a nebula in the same direction as the small constellation Arrow and is believed to have occurred about 2.4 billion light-years away.
Telescopes detected the flare for a full ten hours, which is among the longest ever observed.
And that’s not all, but GRB 221009A may have been one of the most energetic bursts ever observed in outer space.
Caused chaos in the Earth’s atmosphere
These massive explosions in space are usually measured in gigaelectron volts, but a few reach teraelectron volts.
Now the Chinese research center “Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory” measured photons with an energy level of 18 teraelectron volts.
However, more astronomers need to confirm such results before this explosion can be recorded as a world record.
But it has also been described that the explosion caused chaos in the Earth’s atmosphere and left significant disturbances in long-wave transmissions.
Happens every 1000 years
It is still not known for certain what caused this extremely energetic explosion, which astronomers consider a once-in-a-thousand-year event.
It is most likely that a dying giant star collapsed and formed a black hole.
Then new black hole material shoots out of the collapsing star at up to the speed of light. The material then collides with remnants of the star, and then this tremendous gamma radiation is produced.
