SPACE — In 2023, new discoveries will occur which will set many new records. Among the new astronomical records set in 2023 was the announcement of the highest-energy gamma rays originating from the sun. These findings were published in mid-August 2023.
These gamma rays are much stronger than any gamma rays that have been seen before. “The sun is more surprising than we knew,” said Mehr Un Nisa, an astronomer at Michigan State University, as reported by Space.
Previously, the American Space Agency’s (NASA) Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope had detected gamma rays originating from the sun with energies of up to 200 gigaelectronvolts, or GeV (200 billion electronvolts). The rays were very energetic. These gamma rays are produced when particles from outer space, traveling at almost the speed of light, collide with the sun’s atmosphere.
However, a new record coming from observations by the High-Altitude Cherenkov Observatory, or HAWC, in Mexico officially beats that. HAWC is able to detect gamma rays indirectly.
When gamma ray photons enter the Earth’s atmosphere, they collide with atmospheric molecules. Photons destroy these molecules to form a shower of subatomic particles. This rain falls into the HAWC, a type of telescope consisting of 300 water tanks, each containing 200 metric tons of water.
Subatomic particles from collisions between gamma rays and molecules move very fast. As a result, when entering the water, the particles actually move faster than the speed of light through the water. Subatomic particles produce flashes of light, a kind of visual sonic boom, called Cherenkov radiation.
The HAWC data revealed subatomic particles originating from solar gamma rays with an energy of about one trillion electronvolts (1 teraelectronvolt, or TeV). Some of them have energies up to nearly 10 TeV.
“When we first saw it, we were like, ‘we really messed up, the sun can’t be this bright with this energy.’”
While these gamma rays are the most powerful ever seen coming from the Sun, they are not the most powerful ever detected in the universe. The record for the strongest gamma rays comes from gamma rays detected in 2021 by China’s Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory.
The recorded energy reached 1.4 quadrillion electronvolts (1.4 petaelectronvolts, PeV). These gamma rays originate from somewhere far in the universe.
2023-12-25 02:24:00
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