NASA Fermi Telescope Discovers New Feature in Brightest Gamma-Ray Burst

2024-07-26 13:49:10

MADRID, July 26 (EUROPA PRESS) –

Him NASA’s Fermi telescope has discovered a new type of gamma-ray burst that has yet to be observed. As reported by NASA, When matter interacts with light, energy can be absorbed and re-emitted in characteristic ways. These interactions can cause certain colors (or energies) to lighten or darken, creating key features that appear when light shines, like a rainbow, across a surface.

These structures can display a wealth of information, such as the chemical elements involved in the interaction. At higher energies, spectral features can reveal particle-specific patternssuch as the nuclei of matter and antimatter to produce gamma rays.

“While some previous studies have reported possible evidence of absorption and emission of features in other GRBs, further analysis revealed that all of them can simply be calculated up. What we found in BOAT of it’s different,” said co-author Om Sharan Salafia INAF-Brera Observatory in Milan, Italy. “It has been estimated that the chances of this species being a noise mutation are less than one in 500 million.“, added.

GRBs are the most powerful explosions in the cosmos, emitting many gamma rays, the highest type of light. The most common type occurs when the core of a massive star runs out of fuel, collapses, and forms a rapidly expanding black hole. Matter falling into a black hole is made up of jets of particles in opposite directions that pass through the outer layers of the star at nearly the speed of light. A GRB is discovered when one of these spacecraft is pointed directly at Earth.

BOAT, formally known as GRB 221009A, exploded on October 9, 2022 and quickly overwhelmed most gamma-ray detectors in orbit, including those at Fermi. This did not allow them to measure the strongest part of the explosion. Revised observations, together with statistical arguments, suggest that BOAT, if it is part of the same population of GRBs we have seen before, is likely to be the brightest to appear in the sky in 10,000 years.

The emission line should appear approximately 5 minutes after the explosion is detected and long after it has dimmed enough to complete the saturation effects at Fermi. The line lasts for less than 40 seconds and the emission reaches a maximum energy of about 12 MeV (million electron volts). For comparison, the power of light appears to range from 2 to 3 electron volts.

SOURCE OF PROTON ANNIHILATION

The team believes the most likely source is the annihilation of electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons. “When an electron and a positron collide, they annihilate, producing two gamma rays with an energy of 0.511 MeV.“said co-author Gor Oganesyan of the Gran Sasso Science Institute and the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in L’Aquila, Italy.”Since we are looking at the plane, where the matter is traveling at a speed close to that of light, the emission of blue light is abundant and we are pushed towards a very high energy.“, added.

If this interpretation is correct, to produce an emission line with a peak of 12 MeV, the annihilated particles would have to be moving towards us at about 99.9% of the speed of light.

“After decades of studying these amazing cosmic explosions, we still don’t understand the details of how these jets work.“said Elizabeth Hays, Fermi project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Finding clues like this remarkable emission line will help scientists to study the potential environment in great depth.”