Space scientists reveal 70 times brightest gamma-ray burst

NEW YORK: Space scientists have revealed a gamma-ray burst that occurs once in every 10,000 years and was 70 times brighter than any yet seen.

Gamma-ray bursts (GRB) are the most powerful class of explosions in the universe.

The GRB 221009A was first reported when NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory detected X-rays on October 9, 2022. While the source initially appeared to be located in the Milky Way galaxy, not far from the galactic centre, and data from Swift and NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope soon suggested it was much further away.

Observations from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope then pinpointed the burst to a much more distant galaxy that happened to be behind our own. AGRB 221009A created a pulse of intense radiation swept through the solar system so exceptional that astronomers quickly dubbed it the BOAT — the brightest of all time.

“GRB 221009A was likely the brightest burst at X-ray and gamma-ray energies to occur since human civilization began,” said Eric Burns, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

After analysing some 7,000 GRBs — mostly detected by NASA’s Fermi Telescope and the Russian Konus instrument on NASA’s Wind spacecraft — he established that such an event this bright may occur only once in every 10,000 years.

Further calculations show that GRB 221009A lasted for a few seconds, and the blast deposited around a gigawatt of power into Earth’s upper atmosphere. That is the equivalent of a terrestrial power station’s energy output.

“So many gamma rays and X-rays were emitted that it excited the ionosphere of the Earth,” said Erik Kuulkers, ESA Project Scientist for Integral, one of the spacecraft that detected the GRB. (IANS)