Astronomers captured a bursts that produced as much energy as the sun in its entire 10 billion year life.
On June 25, 2016 at 6pm ET, a gamma ray burst, one of the most violent kinds of explosions in the universe, from a source 9 billion light years away, captured.
A brief flash of light, a Gamma ray bursts, occurred when a massive star dies and explodes into a supernova, just before the main event.
Above image a snapshot of burst. Credit S.Karpov, G.Beskin (SAO RAS and Kazan Federal University, Russia).
Professor Carole Mundell at the University of Bath, said:
“It was so bright you could have seen it with a pair of binoculars. They usually happen instantly, but this time we got a flash of light lasting a second that acted as a warning.
Then there was a delay of about 100 seconds, giving us enough time to position the telescopes.
That is quite unusual, and the burst lasted longer than normal, a few minutes which was fortunate.”
source Nature
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