Though we all have differences, there’s one commonality that has prevailed for all of humanity: we are all floating on a rock, flying through outer space at over a million miles an hour.
Thanks to the rapid advancement of technology in the past century, we can observe much more of the universe than we ever thought possible.
The scale and sheer size of the universe make it impossible to truly learn everything, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
Here's what's happening in space this week.
GRB 221009A: 'THE BOAT'
In October of 2022, astronomers were awestruck as multiple telescopes around the world detected a monstrous gamma-ray burst, the Universe's most powerful explosions.
The burst, named GRB 221009A, was the largest explosion ever recorded. The blast was so bright it even temporarily blinded several gamma-ray detectors, and emitted more energy in one second than our Sun will produce in its lifetime.
The explosion has since been referred to as the BOAT (brightest of all time).
“GRB 221009A was likely the brightest burst of 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.
New details about the BOAT were presented by astronomers at the High Energy Astrophysics Division meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Hawaii on Tuesday.
The blast traveled nearly 2 billion years before it was detected on Earth, which classifies it as a "long" GRB because its initial ejection lasted longer than two seconds.
After the GRB was detected, astronomers hypothesized that the burst was likely the result of a massive star collapsing, going supernova, and birthing a monstrous black hole.
Both the Hubble and James Webb telescopes were used to search for a residual supernova that is typically seen following a gamma-ray burst, but they have yet to detect one. Astronomers have even theorized that the star was devoured entirely by a black hole rather than exploding.
“If it’s there, it’s very faint. We plan to keep looking,” said Andrew Levin, a professor of astrophysics at Rabdoub University, “but it’s possible the entire star collapsed straight into the black hole instead of exploding.”
“Being so close and so bright, this burst offered us an unprecedented opportunity to gather observations of the afterglow,” said Kate Alexander, an assistant professor in the department of astronomy at the University of Arizona.
Not only did the burst provide astronomers with a rare opportunity to study the afterglow of a massive explosion, but it also offered new insights into regions of our own galaxy.
Astronomers examined dust clouds within the Milky Way and detected a series of X-ray rings or "light echoes" emanating from the location of the burst. The rings, discovered with NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, were a result of the blast's initial gamma and X-rays reflecting off of layers of dust.
“We were able to use the rings to reconstruct part of the burst’s prompt X-ray emission and to determine where in our galaxy the dust clouds are located," said Sergio Campina, research director at Brera Observatory in Italy.
Data from the Swift Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton telescope later showed that the rings were produced by 21 dust clouds located between 700 and 61,000 light years away within our galaxy, according to NASA.
Scientists have been able to collect unprecedented amounts of data since the initial detection of the blast, so even more new discoveries can be expected.
These new findings were published in a series of articles in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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