A research team led by scientists from the Italian University of L’Aquila announced the observation of a clear impact on the Earth’s atmosphere during the occurrence of the brightest gamma ray explosion observed in a very rare precedent.
According to the study published by this team in the journal “Nature Communications”, several telescopes and satellites observed this explosion on October 9, 2022, including the International Laboratory for Gamma-ray Astrophysics “Integral”, which is a space telescope to monitor gamma rays that it launched. European Space Agency in 2002.
Gamma ray explosions are very active explosions that occur in distant galaxies, and are considered the most powerful category of explosions in the universe that scientists have known about since the sixties of the last century. Recently, they have come to know that they occur due to the collapse of a giant star in on itself, causing the emergence of a massive supernova, or the merger of neutron stars. . (See the following visual video from the European Space Agency for gamma-ray bursts.)
Gamma ray bursts release a huge amount of energy in a relatively short period of time. In the case of the new explosion, which was called “GBR 221009A,” the radiation from the explosion lasted for 800 seconds.
According to the study, the cause of “GBR 221009a” was the collapse of a giant star more than two billion light-years away, which led to the creation of a supernova before it collapsed and turned into a black hole, but the explosion was so powerful that it caused severe effects in the layer of The ionosphere is part of the Earth’s atmosphere, which is located at an altitude of between 80 and 600 km from the Earth’s surface.
This layer is usually affected in a similar way when the Earth is exposed to bursts of charged particles coming from solar explosions, but this time it was affected by particles that traveled two billion years to reach the Earth and left a mark similar to the effect of a massive solar explosion.
It is worth noting that what happened did not affect our lives on Earth, and all that can occur from distant explosions like this are radio effects and effects on satellite communications that do not last long.
Earth’s future and past
According to an official statement issued by the European Space Agency, this cosmic event caught the attention of scientists, because any similar stellar explosion but in the vicinity of the Earth could be catastrophic, to the point that it could completely remove the Earth’s ozone layer.
Fortunately for us, our immediate cosmic surroundings do not currently contain stars that are likely to emit this type of radiation burst. In general, researchers explain that gamma ray bursts, such as GBR 221009a, reach Earth from distant regions only once every ten thousand years.
However, despite this, scientists believe that this type of explosions had a strong impact on the Earth in our distant past, as a team of scientists believes that at least one of those explosions that occurred during the past five billion years near the Earth was capable of causing catastrophic damage.
It is believed that the Ordovician-Silurian extinction that occurred 450 million years ago was due to a gamma ray burst, according to a study published by researchers from the American Physical Society.
This study suggested that the intense radiation from a gamma ray explosion near the Earth led to the erasure of about 40% of the ozone layer, which allowed harmful ultraviolet rays to reach the Earth, and this particularly affected plant life, causing the Earth to lose 20-60% of it.
In addition to depleting the ozone layer, the gamma ray burst may have triggered the sudden global cold snap that began around the same time as the extinction. Gamma rays break down nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the atmosphere and turn them into nitrogen dioxide, which blocks sunlight from Earth. .
Source: European Space Agency
