A cosmic explosion two billion light-years from Earth that blinded space instruments may be the brightest ever seen, astronomers said.
The explosion produced a pulse of intense radiation that swept through the solar system in October last year, triggering detectors on several spacecraft.
The scientists called this type of event a gamma-ray burst (GRB), known to be one of the strongest and brightest explosions in the universe.
This GRB was considered so exceptional that astronomers have said it is the brightest ever since the beginning of human civilization.
The researchers said the event, dubbed GRB 221009A, blinded most gamma-ray instruments in space.
This meant astronomers it was unable to measure the actual intensity of the emission and had to reconstruct its energy expenditure from past and present data.
An analysis of 7,000 GRBs suggests that GRB 221009A is 70 times brighter than any seen so far and that such an event occurs once every 10,000 years.
Dr. Dan Perley of the Research Institute for Astrophysics at Liverpool John Moores University, which followed the event with the university’s Liverpool Telescope on the Spanish island of La Palma, said: “There is nothing in human experience that comes remotely close to such an outpouring of energy.” Nothing.’
Although they last a few seconds, GRBs produce as much energy as the Sun will emit during its lifetime.
Dr Perley said the GRB 221009A event produced “a phenomenal amount of energy”, adding: “It is certainly the highest value ever recorded for a gamma-ray burst.”
Astronomers believe that GRB 221009A is the result of a massive star collapsing in on itself to form a black hole.
Dr Perley said: “The star would have been many times more massive than the Sun, probably 20 times more massive or more.”
GRBs also produce a supernova, but astronomers have yet to determine if that happened in this case.
GRB 221009A is thought to be so bright because it was so much closer to Earth compared to other known GRBs, and the beam of electromagnetic radiation was pointed in the direction of the planet.
Andrew Levan, professor of astrophysics at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, said: “We can’t say conclusively that there is a supernova, which is surprising given the brightness of the outburst.”
If it’s there, it’s very weak.
“We plan to keep looking, but it’s possible that the entire star collapsed directly into the black hole instead of exploding.”
GRBs are typically followed by a shock wave that emits lower-energy radiation, known as afterglow, which gradually fades over time.
Dr Gavin Lamb, Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow of the Royal Society at Liverpool John Moores University, who was part of an international team using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to observe the afterglow GRB 221009A, said that the observations provide “unique insight into the mechanisms responsible.” for these transient flashes of light’.
He said: ‘There is still much more data to be filtered and we will look for clues to explain the relationship between GRBs and supernovae from massive stars, and the dynamics within the afterglow.
“We still do not fully understand many aspects of such high-energy jets.”
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