Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Handout
Last October, astronomers notched another record for the books when they observed the brightest-ever gamma ray burst ever seen, which released an explosion that traveled over 1.9 billion light-years to sweep through the solar system. A follow-up investigation unveils new secrets about the explosion in unprecedented detail—giving scientists a better understanding of what happened and how such an event rollicked through space.
The gamma ray burst “gave us a golden opportunity to test intricate physical models that describe what happens before, during and after the death of a star,” James Leung, a PhD student at the University of Sydney and a co-author of the new study, said in a statement. The study was published Mar. 28 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Gamma ray bursts are the brightest phenomenon in the known universe. They’re among the last high-energy bellows of gigantic stars that are en route to collapsing into black holes, released in all directions.