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The source of a huge eruption that swept through our solar system has been identified by scientists.
The discovery could help understand gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe.
The Earth is regularly struck by light and short gamma-ray bursts, almost every day. But more rarely are there large explosions, like the newly examined GRB 200415A, which brings with them energy more powerful than our own Sun.
The torch appears to have emerged from an unusual and powerful neutron star known as the magnetar, scientists report in new findings published in Nature astronomy.
“Our sun is a very ordinary star. When it dies, it will grow bigger and become a giant red star. After that, it will collapse into a small, compact star called a white dwarf, ”said Soebur Razzaque of the University of Johannesburg, who led the research.
“But stars that are much more massive than the sun play a different ending game.”
Such stars instead explode into a supernova, then leave behind a small, compact star known as a neutron star. They’re tiny – they could be packed into a space 12 miles in diameter – but are so dense that a spoonful would weigh tons.
These stars are the source of the most powerful explosions in the universe. Such explosions affect the telephone signal today, but also represent a way back to the beginnings of the cosmos, arriving with us as messengers of the universe when it was in a much younger state.
The new research began in April of last year – the morning of April 15 – when a giant eruption swept through Mars. It was picked up by a network of satellites including the International Space Station, triggering the research published today.
When GRB 200415A passed over Earth, it was not the first such burst to be detected on Earth. But it was unusual in many ways, including the fact that it was coming from much closer to us than usual.
It was also the first giant rocket of its kind to be captured since the launch of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in 2008. This means that the researchers were able to collect large amounts of data within the 140 milliseconds that it lasted, their giving a much better image than the previous visitor who arrived 16 years ago.
And when the researchers were able to locate the cause, they discovered it was also unusual: it came from a magnetar. There are only 30 of these objects known in our entire Milky Way, made up of tens of thousands of neutron stars, and they can be a thousand times more magnetic than ordinary neutron stars.
The galaxy the rocket originated from is outside of our own Milky Way, but only on a galactic scale. It is only 11.4 million light years away.
Due to the work leading up to last year’s explosion, researchers had built a detailed set of predictions of what such a GRB might look like when it arrived on Earth. Professor Razzaque predicted 15 years ago, for example, that a giant eruption would consist of two explosions, with another closely following the first, and so they were able to compare those predictions with their existing research.
Scientists hope they can find even more and do more detailed research. This could help explain not only the processes that make such powerful explosions possible, but also use them as a means of understanding the history of our cosmos.
“Even though gamma-ray bursts explode from a single star, we can detect them very early in the history of the universe. Even going back to when the universe was a few hundred million years old.” Professor Razzaque said in a statement.
“It is at an extremely early stage in the evolution of the universe. The stars that died then … we only detect their gamma-ray bursts now, because light takes a long time to travel.
“This means that gamma-ray bursts can tell us more about how the universe expands and changes over time.”
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