Scientists believe that these bursts, which last several minutes, are caused by the death of giant stars, more than 30 times larger than the Sun, astrophysicist Brendan O'Connor explained to AFP.
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The star explodes and becomes a supernova, before collapsing and forming a black hole. The matter then forms a disk around the black hole, is absorbed and released as energy, which travels at 99,99% the speed of light.
The flash released photons with a record 18 teraelectronvolts of energy and impacted longwave communications in Earth's atmosphere. “It's breaking records, both in the number of photons and in the energy of the photons that reach us,” said O'Connor, who made new observations of the phenomenon this Friday (14) with infrared instruments on the telescope Gemini South Observatory, Chile.
“Something so bright, so close, is truly a once-in-a-century event,” added the astrophysicist. “Gamma-ray bursts generally release in a matter of seconds the same amount of energy that our Sun has produced or will produce in its entire lifetime, and this event is the brightest gamma-ray burst,” he said.
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The explosion, called GRB221009A, was observed on Sunday morning (Eastern time) by several telescopes, including those at NASA. O'Connor, affiliated with the University of Maryland and George Washington University, will continue to observe supernova signatures in optical and infrared wavelengths to confirm that his hypotheses about the flash's origins are correct.
(AFP)
