Cosmic Blast Reveals Space ‘Monster’

I thought people might be interested in this so here goes…. BTW, I'm not an astronomer.

Last April astronomers witnessed an explosion that was second only to the original Big Bang creation.
Astronomers call it the monster. It was the biggest and brightest cosmic explosion ever witnessed.

Because the blast was 3.7 billion light-years away, we weren’t affected; however, orbiting telescopes got the fireworks show of a lifetime.

What happened was a gamma ray burst, an explosion that happens when a massive star dies, collapses into a brand-new black hole, creates a supernova and ejects energetic radiation that is as bright as can be as it travels across the universe at the speed of light. NASA telescopes in orbit have been seeing these types of bursts for more than two decades, spotting one every couple of days. But this one was special. It set records, according to four studies published Thursday in the journal Science.

A handout image released by the European southern Observatory shows an image of the Antennae Galaxies snapped by Hubble Space Telescope. The recently observed super explosion tore through its galaxy, but was too far to affect Earth. Source: AFP

Here's a foto:
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"When this explosion occurred, it flooded NASA instruments with five times the energy as its nearest competitor, a blast in 1999, said University of Alabama at Huntsville astrophysicist Rob Preece, author of one of the studies.
It started with a star that has 20 to 30 times the mass of our sun, but is only a couple of times bigger in width, so it is incredibly dense. It exploded in a certain violent way.
In general, gamma ray bursts are ``the most titanic explosions in the universe,'' and the one witnessed last spring was so big some of the telescope instruments hit their peak. It was far stronger and lasted longer than previous ones.
One of the main reasons this was so bright was that relative to the thousands of other gamma ray bursts astronomers have seen, the monster was pretty close, even at 3.7 billion light-years."

Gamma rays

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Most of the bursts NASA telescopes have seen have been twice as distant as this one. Other explosions could be this big, but are so much farther away, they don't seem so bright when they get to Earth, according to astronomers.

Apparently we don't see gamma ray bursts on the surface of Earth because the atmosphere obscures them and because their light is the type we cannot see with our eyes, but NASA has satellites that look for them.

For scientists who look for gamma ray bursts, this was a wow moment.

The burst "is part of the cycle of birth and life and death in the universe,'' we are made of the stuff that comes from a supernova.

Scary beasts those things.
I remember seeing a docu and an astronomer said those things are probably the reason the universe isn't teaming with life, because when they go bang they steralise that region of the universe, setting it all back to day one again.

People on this Earth have claimed to know everything from the mind of a supposed God who created all of creation to what it means to be alive and what our life/death cycle means.

Yet everyday, things like what your article talks about happen everyday. A seemingly infinite universe, that we have seen a tiny fragment of.

I love space. It truly shows how insane our reality is.

reply to post by VoidHawk


Yeah, fortunately it was well out of our reach but think of the power of such a thing!

reply to post by RomeByFire


We take so much for granted but in truth this is an incredible trip that we're all a part of. Spinning through space on the outer reaches of our galaxy....it's truly amazing.

reply to post by pandersway


I find the Universe fascinating and beautiful for reasons just like this, but I do find it creepy that if one of those decides to burst relatively close to us, we're doomed... The Universe has so many different ways to annihilate us, I find it amazing that it hasn't happened yet to be quite honest. Especially knowing that scientists witness a GRB about every 2 days...

reply to post by jhn7537


Yeah, it wouldn't take much to upset the apple cart. The balance we find ourselves in is precarious to say the least. Almost as though something was looking after us.

We should be thankful that we live in a relativity begin part of the universe...for now.

reply to post by Thecakeisalie

relativity begin part of the universe.

I think you meant to say 'benign'

I love seeing stuff like that. I like how you can see entire galaxies in the background in that picture.

Now these are stories I live for anything to do with the universe new information that we get just makes a horrible day for me a whole lot better.

doesn't look that big to me.

reply to post by tgidkp


Yeap! I guess you had to be there

tgidkp
doesn't look that big to me.

Well how many have you seen so far?