In October 2022, an extremely bright flash caught the attention of the Gemini South telescope in Chile.
The teams research ispublishedtoday in Nature Astronomy.
Heavy elements are produced by neutron-star mergersat least, some of them are.
An artist’s visualization of the BOAT, consisting of jets from a central black hole and the surrounding remains of a star going supernova.Illustration: Aaron M. Geller / Northwestern / CIERA / IT Research Computing and Data Services
The heavy stuff in the universe is too abundant for such stellar mergers to account for all of them.
Thats pointing us to an alternative channel.
Gamma-ray bursts come in two flavors: long- and short-duration.
Rings of dust spewed out by the BOAT, as seen by the XMM-Newton Observatory.Image:ESA/XMM-Newton/M. Rigoselli (INAF)
The BOAT is staunchly in the latter camp.
The team intentionally waited for several months after the BOAT was detected to turn the Webb Telescope toward it.
This event is particularly exciting because some had hypothesized that a luminous gamma-ray burst like the B.O.A.T.
If they were correct, the B.O.A.T.
should have been a goldmine.
It is really striking that we didnt see any evidence for these heavy elements.
Long gamma ray bursts are those that last more than two seconds.
The BOAT lasted a staggering 10 hours,according to ScienceNews.
But if were being technical, theBOAT isnt actually the BOAT.
Scientists continue to sift through the trove of data yielded by the BOAT.
Astronomers will likely see more explosions like itand like the BOATwhen next-generation observatories come online.
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