Supernova blast emitted record burst of gamma rays
11 years, 4 months ago

Supernova blast emitted record burst of gamma rays

LA Times  

Astronomers have chronicled a record-setting burst of gamma rays from the violent death throes of a relatively nearby massive star that imploded into a black hole. The duration of the event -- on the order of hours -- as well as the number of photons created, the energy of those photons and the total explosive energy and radiance “topped the charts” for gamma ray bursts recorded by NASA and its international peers, said Paul Hertz, director of NASA’s astrophysics division. “It’s much more than the energy that the sun has emitted in its whole life,” said Stanford University astrophysicist Nicola Omodei, one of the authors of a series of studies analyzing the gamma ray burst published online Thursday in the journal Science. “We measured events at very high energy that challenge traditional modeling” of gamma ray bursts, Omodei said. Gamma ray bursts are something of the firefly of the astronomy world - very brief but intense radiation events that occur in every reach of the known universe with near daily regularity.

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