Scientists are taking a closer look at the afterglow left by the
brightest gamma-ray burst ever recorded, and what they see doesn't fit with any theoretical models.
© NASA's Goddard Spa ce Flight CenterA NASA illustration showing the typical evolution of a long gamma-ray burst — the most common type of GRB.
The
brightest gamma-ray burst ever detected is revealing new mysteries as scientists study it in greater detail.
In two new papers - one published today in
The Astrophysical Journal Letters, and another published on the preprint server
arXiv and submitted for publication in the journal Nature Astronomy - astronomers found that the evolution of the radio waves released by an enormous stellar explosion seen in 2022 was slower than models predicted, raising questions about how the release of energy evolves during ultra-powerful gamma-ray bursts.
"[I]t is very difficult for existing models to replicate the slow evolution of the energy peaks that we observed,"
James Leung, a doctoral student at the University of Sydney who co-authored the Nature Astronomy paper, said in a statement. "This means we have to refine and develop new theoretical models to understand these most extreme explosions in the Universe."
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are brief, bright flashes of
gamma-ray light that are thought to be the most powerful explosions in our universe since the Big Bang. GRBs are released during extreme stellar explosions or supernovas, when a dying star runs out of fuel and collapses into a neutron star or even a
black hole. The
brightest burst ever seen, known as GRB 221009A, was first detected on Oct. 9, 2022 by gamma-ray and X-ray telescopes. The likely supernova that caused the burst was 2.4 billion light-years away from Earth.
Comment: Why not? There doesn't seem to be much point in doing that if they weren't communicating something. See also: