NASA finds unprecedented energy source from "the dead"

(NLDO) - NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has just captured what is described as an "energy peak" in the universe.

According to SciTech Daily, the energy source mentioned above is called BOAT by astronomers - the brightest gamma-ray burst (GRB) of all time.

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has collected data on an energy source more powerful than anything ever recorded - Photo: NASA

BOAT, formerly known as GRB 221009A, exploded on October 9, 2022, and quickly saturated most orbiting gamma-ray detectors, including those at Fermi.

This means that incredibly powerful instruments like Fermi have yet to measure the most intense part of the energy burst, which is believed to be the brightest to appear in Earth's skies in 10,000 years.

Now, an international team of scientists has solved some of the mystery.

They focused on finding the answer to the main question: What caused this energy explosion?

The most likely source is the annihilation of electrons and their antimatter counterparts called positrons, according to co-author Gor Oganesyan from the Gran Sasso Institute of Science and Gran Sasso National Laboratory (Italy).

"When an electron and a positron collide, they annihilate each other, creating a pair of gamma rays with an energy of 0.511 MeV," Dr. Oganesyan explained.

If this explanation is correct, to produce the emission line peaking at 12 MeV, the annihilation particles must be traveling toward us at about 99.9% the speed of light.

These parameters are quite consistent with the hypothesis of the most common source that can emit gamma radiation, which is the death of supergiant stars.

In theory, supermassive stars that run out of fuel can collapse and form a rapidly rotating black hole.

Matter falling into the black hole powers jets of particles that head in opposite directions, traveling through the outer layers of the star at nearly the speed of light. We detect GRBs when one of these jets is pointed almost directly toward Earth.

The above theory has been proposed for a long time, but there are still a few points that scientists do not clearly understand.

So Fermi's BOAT data promise to provide even more clues about the deadly energy outbursts of massive stars.

And it also shows that NASA's Fermi is well-placed to provide some more similar examples, should similar energy bursts occur in the future.

Source: https://nld.com.vn/nasa-tim-ra-nguon-nang-luong-manh-chua-tung-thay-tu-coi-chet-196240729111428724.htm