Scientists have detected a series of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), the strongest explosions in the universe, originating from the same source within a single day. This unprecedented phenomenon cannot be explained by any current scenario.
On Tuesday, September 9, the European Southern Observatory reported that GRBs are flashes of high-energy radiation occurring during extremely violent events, such as the deaths of massive stars in powerful explosions or their destruction by black holes. These bursts typically last from a few milliseconds to several minutes, during which they can release energy equivalent to billions of suns.
Antonio Martin-Carillo, an astronomer at University College Dublin, noted that theoretically, “gamma-ray bursts never repeat because the event that produces them is catastrophic.” He highlighted that this makes the signal detected by scientific communities this summer “different from any signal recorded in the past fifty years.”
The first alert was issued on July 2 by NASA’s Fermi telescope, which detected not just one flash but three bursts from the same source over a few hours. Scientists later discovered that this source had been active about a day prior, based on data collected by the Einstein Probe, a X-ray space telescope operated by China in collaboration with the European Space Agency and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.
According to Andrew Levan, an astronomer at Radboud University in the Netherlands, the signal lasted “100 to 1000 times longer” than most gamma-ray bursts.
### Astronomers’ Speculations
Initially, astronomers believed the gamma-ray burst originated within the Milky Way galaxy, which includes our solar system and Earth. However, observations using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in the Atacama Desert of Chile provided evidence that the source may have originated from another galaxy. This hypothesis was confirmed by the Hubble Space Telescope, suggesting that the host galaxy could be several billion light-years away, indicating a significant event.
The nature of the event that produced the signal remains unknown. One potential scenario involves an unusual collapse of a very massive star, while another theory suggests a peculiar star was destroyed by an even stranger black hole.
Source
