The brightest light ever seen from Earth intrigues astronomers: “once every century”; understand – world

Seen on October 9, the brightest flash of light ever observed intrigues astronomers, who are trying to confirm the origin of the phenomenon. Emitted at a distance of 2.4 billion light years from Earth, the brightness would be caused by the birth of a Black hole.

This gamma-ray burst is the more intense form of radiation electromagnetic radiation and its residual light continue to be studied by scientists around the world.

How and why this light appeared

Scientists believe these explosions, which last several minutes, are caused by the death of giant starsmore than 30 times larger than the Sun, astrophysicist Brendan O’Connor explained.

The star explodes and becomes a supernova, before collapsing to form a black hole.

The matter then forms a disk around the black hole, is absorbed and released as energy traveling at 99.99% of the speed of light.

The explosion, called GRB221009A, was observed on Sunday morning (East Coast time) by several telescopes, including those from NASA.

O’Connor, affiliated with the University of Maryland and George Washington University, will continue to examine supernova signatures in the optical and infrared wavelengths to confirm that his assumptions about the origin of the flash are correct.

Record of brightness

The flash released photons with a record 18 teraelectron volts of energy and impacted long-wave communications in Earth’s atmosphere.

“It is breaking records, both in the number of photons and in the energy of the photons that reach us,” said O’Connor, who on Friday made new observations of the phenomenon with infrared instruments at the Gemini South Observatory in Chile.

“Something so bright, so close, is truly a once-in-a-lifetime event,” added the astrophysicist.

“Gamma-ray bursts generally release the same amount of energy in seconds that our Sun has produced or will produce throughout its life, and this event is the brightest gamma-ray burst,” he said.