And recently, on October 9, astronomers observed an extremely colossal explosion. NASA’s Swift Observatory, which is specially designed to detect the most powerful explosions known in the universe today – called gamma-ray bursts – spotted one extremely powerful such burst. Something extremely powerful must be producing these jets of energy that travel through space, and scientists say they are caused by the collapse and explosion of massive stars, events called supernovae. For a star to go supernova, it has to be big enough — at least eight times the size of the sun. But for a supernova to produce the strongest type of gamma-ray burst, the star must be about 30 to 40 times the size of the sun. This new powerful detection, so rare that we’ll likely see something of this magnitude about once a decade, came from such a powerful star. “It’s a very unique event,” Yvette Sendes, an astronomer and postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Mashable. SEE ALSO: Huge, mysterious explosion spotted in deep space The important thing is that you don’t have to worry. This tremendous explosion occurred in a galaxy 2 billion light years away. At such a distance, its energy, which has been traveling and spreading through space for centuries, poses no danger to us. But we can easily, with satellites, locate it. “It’s the equivalent of getting front-row seats at a fireworks display,” Sentes explained. (Gamma rays are in the same spectrum of radiation as AM and FM radio, the visible light you can see, and X-rays, although gamma rays have the most energy.) “This is incredibly, incredibly rare.” Astronomers have never seen a gamma ray burst in our galactic neighborhood (meaning the local galaxies around us). This is because starbursts themselves are not very common. A star in our Milky Way will go supernova about once a century. But a massive star, the type needed to make an extremely bright and long (on the order of a few minutes) gamma-ray burst, explodes only once every million years in a medium-sized galaxy like ours, Cendes noted. “This is incredibly, incredibly rare,” Sentes said. Gamma-ray bursts are detected far away because there are hundreds of billions of galaxies out there in the deep universe, full of stars. There are relatively few opportunities for such an event to occur near us, compared to the wider universe. (Also, to detect it, you have to look in the direction of the “funnel” of energy emitted into space by the explosion.) Tweet may have been deleted (opens in new tab) An artist’s impression of a gamma-ray burst from an exploding star. Credit: NASA/ESA/. M. Kornmesser Because these gamma-ray bursts often occur many billions of light-years away, the instruments built to detect these signals are extremely sensitive. This is another reason why this detection, which was relatively “close”, was so intense and “bright”. “It’s like pointing a telescope at the sun,” Cendes explained. “Satiate the scouts.” The burst “ranks among the brightest events known,” NASA noted. You might be wondering what now happens to the star that exploded after such a dramatic collapse and explosion. It probably transformed into a black hole. “Most black holes form from the remains of a large star that dies in a supernova explosion,” notes NASA. Want more science and technology news delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for Mashable’s Top Stories newsletter today. NASA’s Swift telescope recorded the “afterstream” of the powerful gamma-ray burst about an hour after the agency detected the event. Credit: NASA / Swift / A. Beardmore (University of Leicester) Tweet may have been deleted (opens in new tab) Black holes are incredibly strange cosmic objects. As Mashable previously reported, black holes are places where matter has been crushed into an extremely compact region. If the Earth were (hypothetically) crushed into a black hole, it would be under an inch in diameter. However, the object would still be extremely massive, containing the entire mass of our planet. This results in a place with a gravitational pull so strong that not even light can escape. (Things with more mass have stronger gravitational pulls.) Astronomers like Cendes are now monitoring the aftermath of the dramatic gamma-ray burst using powerful telescopes, such as the Submillimeter Array radio telescope atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii. That’s how the universe works. A star dies. A black hole is born. And intelligent life about 2 billion light years away detects all this happening.
UPDATE: October 17, 2022, 7:45 am UTC This story has been updated to reflect the exact date astronomers detected the powerful gamma-ray burst.
