What was this gamma-ray burst?
The gamma-ray burst was a particularly huge space explosionthought to be causedby the brilliant death of a distant star.
Thats not literally true, but its definitely the brightest thats ever been recorded.
An illustration of a gamma-ray burst emitted by a collapsing star.© NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
But nearly two years since the event, researchers are still learning new information about the BOAT.
The event wasconfirmed as the BOATin March 2023.
The BOAT was determined to be a one-in-10,000-year event.
A graphic showing the BOAT’s energy compared to the previous five longest-known gamma-ray bursts. © Graphic: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and Adam Goldstein (USRA)
A research teampublishedits X-ray observations of the burst inThe Astrophysical Journal Letters.
That June, another team analyzed the structure of theBOATs gamma ray jet.
Researcherspublished a more complete analysisof the BOATs gamma-ray energy output in November 2023.
Ultimately, the team identified over 140 gamma-rays in the event that exceeded 3 teraelectronvolts.
The finding challenges the standard model of GRB afterglows, one researcher told Gizmodo.
What did the researchers find?
The research team believes it was brought on by collisions between electrons and positronstheir antimatter counterpart.
The BOATs extreme explosiveness was already well-known, but the new research puts that dynamism into perspective.
What now for the BOAT?
Scientists are still sifting through the explosive aftermath of the 2022 explosion.
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