Hubble Studies Gamma-Ray Burst with the Highest Energy Ever Seen
Release date: Nov 20, 2019 1:00 PM (EST)
The Star Wars film trilogies are known best for the iconic "Death Star," an alien battle station that shoots out beams of directed energy powerful enough to blow up planets. The real universe makes much more extraordinary beams that can unleash in a few seconds as much energy as our sun will generate over its 10-billion-year lifetime. These beams blast out of imploding stars at over 99% the speed of light. They carry most of their energy in the form of gamma-rays—a lethal form of radiation that can penetrate bone and tear apart living cells. If our planet got caught in a nearby gamma-ray burst (GRB) the atmosphere would be largely stripped away.
The current record for a super-powerful GRB goes to a January 2019 outburst. The eruption came from a galaxy located so far away that the explosion actually happened 5 billion years ago. When the diluted radiation finally arrived at Earth, it was seen by our satellite sentries that monitor the sky for such fireworks: NASA's Swift and Fermi telescopes, in addition to the Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) telescopes on the Canary islands.
Hubble can't detect gamma-rays, but its sharp vision was used to see where the burst came from. The host galaxy of the GRB is actually one of a pair of colliding galaxies. The galaxy interactions may have contributed to the blast.
Read more
Find the entire Hubble News archive, images, and videos at HubbleSite.org.
Please do not reply to this message.
You are receiving this email because you are subscribed to the Inbox Astronomy mailing list.
No comments:
Post a Comment