2023-11-22 07:00:08
The Universe, in its most spectacular manifestations, recently offered us an extraordinary phenomenon. In October 2022, a gamma-ray burst of unprecedented brightness was detected by specialized satellites orbiting the Earth. Nicknamed the “brightest of all time” (BOAT) and officially designated GRB 221009A, this burst was caused by the explosion (An explosion is the rapid transformation of one material into another material having a …) of a massive star located more than 2 billion light years away, leading to the formation of a black hole.
This illustration shows a powerful burst of gamma rays disrupting the Earth’s atmosphere.
Credit: ESA/ATG Europe; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The impact of this explosion on our planet was considerable. The gamma rays emitted by the BOAT strongly disrupted the Earth’s ionosphere, a layer rich in electrically charged particles, located between 50 and 1000 kilometers (The meter (symbol m, from the Greek metron, measurement) is the basic unit of length of the System…) above the surface of the Earth. Pietro Ubertini, scientist (A scientist is a person who devotes himself to the study of a science or sciences and who…) at the National Institute of Astrophysics (Astrophysics (from the Greek astro = star and physico = physics) is a branch…) and co-author of the research (Scientific research refers primarily to all the actions undertaken with a view…), published on November 14 in the journal Nature Communications, emphasizes that This is the most powerful gamma-ray burst ever measured since measurements began in the 1960s.
The BOAT was found to be at least 10 times more powerful than the most energetic gamma-ray burst known so far. Jillian Rastinejad, a doctoral candidate at Northwestern University, revealed that the photons detected from this burst had more energy than those produced by the Large Collider (A collider is a type of particle accelerator involving beams. ..) of Hadrons (LHC), with energies reaching at least 18 teraelectronvolts (TeV).
An illustration shows how gamma-ray bursts like BOAT are created during black hole birth processes.
Credit: ESA/ATG Europe; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The disruption caused by the BOAT in the ionosphere was so intense that even the lowest layers, located a few tens of kilometers above the Earth’s surface, were affected. Laura Hayes, solar physicist at the European Space Agency, compares this disturbance to that of a major solar flare. Radio waves, bouncing between the Earth’s surface and the ionosphere, were impacted, revealing a “downward” movement of the ionosphere.
This event raises crucial questions regarding the potentially catastrophic consequences of a near-Earth gamma-ray burst. Not only might such a phenomenon disrupt the ionosphere, but it might also destroy the ozone layer, exposing life on Earth to ultraviolet radiation (Ultraviolet (UV) radiation is electromagnetic radiation with a length… ) harmful coming from the Sun.
The research team, using data collected by the China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite (CSES), is continuing its study on the effects of gamma-ray bursts, in the hope of better understanding these fascinating but potentially dangerous phenomena.
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