An unusually bright and long-lasting pulse of radiation swept over our planet on Sunday, October 9, according to NASA. This cosmic blast came from a “gamma-ray burst,” (GRB) which is one of the most powerful kinds of explosions in the universe.
As the wave of X-rays and gamma rays passed through the solar system, it triggered detectors at NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and Wind spacecraft amongst other observatories. The signal originated from the direction of the constellation Sagitta and had travelled close to 1.9 billion years to reach our planet. Currently, astronomers propose that it was caused by the heart of a massive star collapsing under its own weight to form a black hole. When this happens, the budding black hole attracts powerful streams of particles travelling at nearly the speed of light. When these jets pierce through the star, it emits X-rays and gamma rays.
In April this year, NASA’s NICER X-ray telescope and a Japanese detector called Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI) were linked to create OHMAN (Orbiting High-energy Monitor Alert Network). This explosion provided a great inaugural opportunity for the two linked experiments to observe. With the link, NICER automatically and rapidly turns to outbursts detected by MAXI; something that previously required interventions by scientists on the ground.
This week started with a bang — a record-breaking gamma-ray burst caught by our Fermi and Swift telescopes, among others. The blast likely signaled the birth of a black hole in a collapsing star nearly 2 billion years ago. More: https://t.co/GOnsPrsVxF pic.twitter.com/yJI2whqGuY
— NASA BOOniverse 👻 (@NASAUniverse) October 13, 2022
“OHMAN provided an automated alert that enabled NICER to follow up within three hours, as soon as the source became visible to the telescope. Future opportunities could result in response times of a few minutes” said Zaven Arzoumanian, NICER science lead at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, in an agency press statement.
This GRB brings along glad tidings for scientists in the form of new insights into stellar collapses and the birth of black holes. It also helps them learn more about interactions of matter when they near the speed of light. Another GRB like this may not happen for decades, according to NASA.
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