Observatories, telescopes, infrared and tools generally used by NASA to explore the cosmos they have detected any number of stellar phenomena, which help to understand the formation of the universe. Starbursts, usually called supernovae, are part of this huge number of events in the cosmos that have been captured.
There is an event they call GRB, an acronym to describe gamma ray bursts, which are generated as a result of these explosions. And there is one in particular, that only it becomes visible to Earth every 10,000 years and NASA was able to detect it.
It happened on October 9, 2022. A team of scientists captured this extremely powerful cosmic gamma-ray burst event that has been designated as GRB 221009A. The explosion was detected by several telescopes and emitted a significant amount of high-energy gamma radiation.
According to experts, the GRB 221009A originated about 10 billion light-years away from Earth, which means that it occurred about 10 billion years ago. Due to the enormous distance, the event actually happened a long time ago, but it took billions of years for the light from the burst to reach Earth.
“A burst this bright reaches Earth only once every 10,000 years,” said Eric Burns, an assistant professor and Louisiana state astronomer involved in the detection, according to the portal. PopScience.
The signal from GRB 221009A had been traveling for approximately 1.9 billion years before reaching Earth, making it one of the closest known “long” GRBs, with an initial emission lasting more than two seconds. https://t.co/GocpRk4UPr
— Ramón Encinas (@Ramon_E_G) March 28, 2023
GRBs are very powerful cosmic events that emit large amounts of energy in the form of gamma radiation. These events occur when a massive star collapses or when two neutron stars collide with each other. GRBs are one of the most violent events in the universe, and can provide important information about the evolution of the universe and the extreme conditions in which they occur.
GRB 221009A is particularly interesting because it is one of the most powerful GRBs detected to date.. Scientists estimate that the energy released by the event is equivalent to that released by 2,000 supernovae. In addition, the event was detected by several telescopes, which allowed scientists to study the event from various points of view.
Scientists are also interested in GRB 221009A because it may help to better understand the physics of the most violent objects in the universe. GRBs are very complicated events and there is still a lot that is not understood about them. By studying events like GRB 221009A, scientists can improve their understanding of the processes that occur in GRBs and how they are produced.