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November 21, 2019 07:00 am

A Mysterious Burst of Energy In Space Has Smashed Records

For the first time, astrophysicists have observed a cosmic explosion emit particles that are a trillion times more energetic than visible light, a record-setting measurement from a phenomenon that scientists are still seeking to fully understand. Motherboard reports: The observation of this powerful gamma-ray burst (GRB), as these explosions are known, adds another layer to what scientists think happens when a star implodes. The findings were published on November 20 in two papers in the journal Nature. [...] After the GRB was detected, telescopes on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands quickly adjusted to observe it. The telescopes are overseen by the MAGIC collaboration, weigh 64 tons each, and were designed to measure extremely high-energy emissions from gamma-ray bursts. They automatically process alerts from satellites and adjust to face the bursts in less than a minute. A fast response time is crucial: Gamma-ray bursts can last from a fraction of a second to mere minutes. Elena Moretti was one of the scientists working the night of the GRB's detection, and a co-author of the two studies. The burst came from a progenitor star that was 4.5 billion light-years away, according to the studies -- relatively close, astronomically speaking. The farther away high-energy particles are from Earth, the more likely they are to be absorbed by extragalactic background light and not reach our telescopes. After verifying that the GRB observed emitted photons in the TeV range, scientists realized the process used to explain and model these bursts could not account for such a high energy. Instead, Moretti said they are nearly certain that the emitted photons were raised to a TeV-level energy after colliding with nearby electrons.

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