Posted on 02/19/2009 10:04:45 PM PST by rdl6989
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US space agency's Fermi telescope has detected a massive explosion in space which scientists say is the biggest gamma-ray burst ever detected, a report published Thursday in Science Express said.
The spectacular blast, which occurred in September in the Carina constellation, produced energies ranging from 3,000 to more than five billion times that of visible light, astrophysicists said.
"Visible light has an energy range of between two and three electron volts and these were in the millions to billions of electron volts," astrophysicist Frank Reddy of US space agency NASA told AFP.
"If you think about it in terms of energy, X-rays are more energetic because they penetrate matter. These things don't stop for anything -- they just bore through and that's why we can see them from enormous distances," Reddy said.
A team led by Jochen Greiner of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics determined that the huge gamma-ray burst occurred 12.2 billion light years away.
The sun is eight light minutes from Earth, and Pluto is 12 light hours away.
Taking into account the huge distance from earth of the burst, scientists worked out that the blast was stronger than 9,000 supernovae -- powerful explosions that occur at the end of a star's lifetime -- and that the gas jets emitting the initial gamma rays moved at nearly the speed of light.
"This burst's tremendous power and speed make it the most extreme recorded to date," a statement issued by the US Department of Energy said.
Gamma-ray bursts are the universe's most luminous explosions, which astronomers believe occur when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel and collapse.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I thought you might be interested in this. Ping.
Bruce Banner, please seek underground shelter.
Wow. Thanks for posting. We need to send Algore out to investigate.
Uh oh, will that toast our icebergs when it reaches here?
Gamma ray alert!
Unfathomable.
That’s what I thought. It happened 12 billion years ago. I thought these things were supposed to be detrimental to radios etc.
Yes.
The event occurred at least 12.2 billion years ago.
Few journalists earn their pay.
I read somewhere that experts believe that the universe is around 15 billion years old. It really does boggle the mind to think about it.
HULK SMASH!!...Obama..aaarhhh
Obama? BAH! Puny human!
He’s no “human”. He’s the villain called Magic Negro.
Rove, you magnificent bastard.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, he’s the villain from outside America known as “Weapon O” aka “Elephant Ears,” kind of a low-budget Wolverine knock-off. I still have the issue where “EE” as we kids used to call him first appeared.
It sold at a 25 cent cover price, and now goes on ebay for as much as 13 cents.
Actually - a telescope of this size “looks out” to a distance of about 3 light years. So, with this thing coming straight at us at the speed of light it will impact earth in 2012. Perhaps the Aztec WERE onto something.
...Okay - just kidding. Obviously a telescope can only observe light that is impacting its lens. (Heck - this was probably a radiotelescope anyway!) Which would work the same way.
The one I get concerned about is the satellite we have parked between us and the sun (SOHO I think it is called?)that monitors sun flares, etc. Can see the “kill shot” coming and gives us 18 minutes (or whatever) of warning.
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