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NASA satellite detects record gamma ray burst

Biggest explosion ever seen in the universe

GreenTea

27.Mar.2008 21:10 hrs

NASA Satellite Detects Record Gamma Ray Burst Explosion Halfway Across The Universe

Something, somewhere, out there has gone off with one ultra-super-awesomely mega-ginormous bang. On March 19th, NASA's "Swift" satellite, dedicated to the study of gamma-ray bursts from the depths of the Universe, detected by far the biggest gamma-ray explosion ever recorded.

GRB 080319B's optical afterglow was 2.5 million times more luminous than the most luminous supernova ever recorded, making it the most intrinsically bright object ever observed by humans in the universe.

Despite being a vast 7.5 billion light-years distant (and hence occurring at a time when the Universe was only about half its present age), it would have been visible with the naked eye to someone who happened to be looking in that direction in a dark, clear sky. Astronomers are now racking their brains to figure out what might have caused it.

Funny old place, the Universe.

eurovol

27.Mar.2008 21:11 hrs

Supernova?

sharpe

27.Mar.2008 21:16 hrs

Cosmic inflation

GreenTea

28.Mar.2008 12:04 hrs

@Eurovol: Supernova? - well as it says in the bit I quoted: "2.5 million times more luminous than the most luminous supernova ever recorded". Even an ordinary everyday common-or-garden supernova is an ultra-super-awesome explosion, so this one must have been super-awesome to the power of super-awesome.

Or I wonder if it could have been just an average super-awesome supernova magnified by a gravitational lens?

Kat

28.Mar.2008 12:25 hrs

This is the photo of it:
Attached image

GreenTea

14.Apr.2008 18:31 hrs

The Hubble Space Telescope took a peek at the aftermath on April 7th: Hubble Pinpoints Record-Breaking Explosion

For nearly a minute this single star was as bright as 10 million galaxies.

Hubble astronomers had hoped to see the host galaxy where the burst presumably originated, but were taken aback that the light from the GRB is still drowning out the galaxy's light even three weeks after the explosion.

Wow!

Night Owl

15.Apr.2008 01:59 hrs

According to your Hubble link Green Tea, it says it was a "hypernova"

interplanetjanet

15.Apr.2008 04:46 hrs

Yeah, there's definitely a subset of astronomers who like the prefix "hyper" for really big events.

Neato, GreenTea, thanks for the link!

sharpe

15.Apr.2008 06:42 hrs

The Incredible Hulk?

GreenTea

10.Sep.2008 18:18 hrs

Update hot off the press: Brightest gamma-ray burst provides wealth of information on how stars explode

"We conclude that the burst's extraordinary brightness arose from a jet that shot material almost directly towards Earth at almost the speed of light ..."

"We happened to view this monster down the barrel of the very narrow and energetic jet, and the chance for this nearly head-on alignment to occur is only about once a decade"

GreenTea

20.Feb.2009 15:55 hrs

NASA reports another huge gamma ray burst

February 20, 2009: The first gamma-ray burst to be seen in high-resolution from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is one for the record books. The blast had the greatest total energy, the fastest motions and the highest-energy initial emissions ever seen.

"We were waiting for this one," said Peter Michelson, the principal investigator on Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) at Stanford University. "Burst emissions at these energies are still poorly understood, and Fermi is giving us the tools to understand them."

With the distance in hand, Fermi team members calculated that the blast exceeded the power of approximately 9,000 ordinary supernovae, if the energy was emitted equally in all directions. This is a standard way for astronomers to compare events even though gamma-ray bursts emit most of their energy in tight jets.

Coupled with the Fermi measurements, the distance also helps astronomers determine the speed of the gamma-ray emitting material. Within the jet of this burst, gas bullets must have moved at least 99.9999 percent the speed of light. This burst's tremendous power and speed make it the most extreme recorded to date.

Genie

20.Feb.2009 15:59 hrs

gas bullets must have moved at least 99.9999 percent the speed of light

Interesting. So can any of the physicist that frequent this site tell us if there's anything to be learned about subparticle physics from this thing, seeing as the LHC and its predecessors are all basically attempts to get close to the speed of light and collide particles to blow them into smaller bits? Can you record anything from that far away, something in the profile of the EMG radiation that would tell you something you can't know before the LHC guys get their shit together again (and maybe even after...)?

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