Astronomers just spotted the most powerful flash of light ever seen

[Admin]

Astronomers may have detected the most powerful flash of light ever seen. The so-called gamma-ray burst was also the nearest ever observed.

Astronomers just spotted the most powerful flash of light ever seen : Read more

 

[billslugg]

Confusing article. They call it the most powerful flash of light but give the power in units of energy, not power. Twelve Tera electron volts is about a billionth of a BTU. Perhaps they are referring to the energy of a single photon. In this case they can call them the most energetic photons ever observed. But to know the total power of the outburst we need to know the number of photons arriving per unit time.

 

[TheFreshWince]

Right, the energy is all wrong. Tiny. An article in arxiv talks about the spectrum:

Very recently the LHAASO experiment has detected the gamma ray burst GRB221009A with a photon very-high-energy tail extending up to 18 TeV.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.05659

 

[rod]

I read this report on the GRB. Record-breaking gamma-ray burst possibly most powerful explosion ever recorded, https://phys.org/news/2022-10-record-breaking-gamma-ray-possibly-powerful-explosion.html

An interesting report. I note, "Scientists are also wondering how very-high-energy 18 TeV (tera-electron-volt) photons observed with the Chinese Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory could defy our standard understanding of physics and survive their 2.4 billion year journey to Earth. This event, because of its relative proximity to Earth, is also a unique opportunity to better understand the origin of the elements heavier than iron and whether they all come solely from neutron-star mergers or also from collapsing stars that trigger GRBs. "The Gemini observations will allow us to utilize this nearby event to the fullest and seek out the signatures of heavy elements formed and ejected in the massive star collapse," said O'Connor."

Looks like r-process elements are or will be studied here and the distance of 2.4 billion light years, apparently causes problems for the energy level observed, 18 TeV. Perhaps this GRB is much closer than 2.4 billion light years https://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/toolbox/calculators.html, using this calculator, 2.4 Gly distance suggested a redshift ~ 0.2. The age of the universe at z=0.2 ~ 11.271 Gyr and diameter of the universe ~ 4.46 Gly when the GRB event took place. Calculations like this go into the interpretation of the 18 TeV energy report. ---Rod

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Just to add to the idea of what a gamma ray burst much closer to us could mean: https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opin...milky-way-threatens-rare-gamma-ray-burst.html