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The massive gamma-ray burst consisted of a combination of bright X-rays and gamma rays recorded in the sky, emitted by distant extragalactic sources.
More than a billion light-years from Earth, a massive gamma-ray burst was recorded in the constellation Eridanus. The explosion was actually the death of the star and the beginning of its transformation into a black hole, say experts from the German “Electron Synchrotron” in Hamburg. This space event represents the largest explosion in space ever recorded.
The massive gamma-ray burst consisted of a combination of bright X-rays and gamma rays recorded in the sky, emitted by distant extragalactic sources. It was discovered by the Fermi and Swift space telescopes, with the support of the Earth’s High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS) telescope in Namibia.
Although it is a billion light-years from Earth, the explosion is thought to be happening inside our “cosmic courtyard,” coming from the constellation Eridanus.
It is the most energetic radiation and with the longest gamma radiation of any burst radiation discovered to date, say the German team that recorded it. Previous gamma-ray bursts were on average twenty billion light-years away. The burst, which was named GRB 190829A, was first discovered on August 29, 2019, RTS writes.
HESS’s observations shed new light on how gamma rays are produced in these colossal stellar explosions, which represent the birth of black holes, according to the team.
Dr. Andrew Taylor from the German “Electron Synchrotron”, co-author of the study, said that they were “in the first place” when the gamma-ray burst occurred, and the scientists were able to observe the subsequent glow a few days after the unprecedented emission of gamma-ray energy.
Co-author Edna Ruiz-Velasco, a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Germany, was also included in the research. She said that they managed to determine the spectrum of the explosion up to 3.3 teraelectronvolts.
Scientist Sylvia Zhu, one of the authors of the paper, said that these bursts were the biggest explosion in space caused by the collapse of a rapidly rotating star. “Their show is divided into two different phases: the initial chaotic phase, which lasts for tens of seconds, followed by a long phase of subsequent shine,” Zhu explained.
Established theories assume that the two emission components must be produced by a separate mechanism, similar to how particle accelerators on Earth produce bright X-rays for scientific research.
However, according to existing theories, it seemed very unlikely that even the most powerful explosions in space could accelerate electrons enough to directly produce the observed high-energy gamma rays. This is due to the “combustion limit”, which is determined by the balance of acceleration and cooling of particles inside the accelerator on Earth, scientists explain.
But observations of the afterglow of GRB 190829A now show that both components, X-ray and gamma-ray, have faded synchronously. Also, the gamma-ray spectrum clearly coincided with the extrapolation of the X-ray spectrum. Together, all these results are a strong indication that ex-rays and very high-energy gamma rays are produced by the same mechanism.
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