Giant Gamma-Ray Burst Trillion Times More Powerful Than Visible Light – Observed

Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com –  The powers of some forces in the Universe are almost beyond comprehension.

Astronomers have observed a giant gamma-ray burst trillion times more powerful than visible light. In just a few seconds the gamma-ray burst (GRB) emitted more energy than the Sun will provide over its entire 10-billion year life.

Giant Gamma-Ray Burst Trillion Times More Powerful Than Visible Light – Observed

Shown in this illustration, gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the universe. They emit most of their energy in gamma rays, light which is much more energetic than the visible light we can see with our eyes. 
Credits: NASA, ESA and M. Kornmesser

In January 2019, an extremely bright and long-duration GRB was detected by NASA’s Swift and Fermi telescopes. This powerful blast was also detected by the Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) telescopes on the Canary islands.

Follow-up observations were made with Hubble to study the environment around the GRB and find out how this extreme emission is produced.

“Hubble’s observations suggest that this particular burst was sitting in a very dense environment, right in the middle of a bright galaxy 5 billion light years away. This is really unusual, and suggests that this concentrated location might be why it produced this exceptionally powerful light,” explained Andrew Levan of the Institute for Mathematics, Astrophysics and Particle Physics Department of Astrophysics at Radboud University in the Netherlands.

“This new Hubble observation of accompanying lower-energy radiation from the region is a vital step in our understanding of gamma-ray bursts [and] their immediate surroundings,” Antonio de Ugarte Postigo of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain said.


Hubble’s observations suggest that this particular burst displayed such powerful emission because the collapsing star was sitting in a very dense environment, right in the middle of a bright galaxy 5 billion light-years away.

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Known as GRB 190114C, some of the radiation detected from the object had the highest energy ever observed. Scientists have been trying to observe such very high energy emission from GRBs for a long time, so this detection is considered a milestone in high-energy astrophysics, say researchers.

Previous observations revealed that to achieve this energy, material must be emitted from a collapsing star at 99.999% the speed of light. This material is then forced through the gas that surrounds the star, causing a shock that creates the gamma-ray burst itself.

Written by Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com – Staff