The SGRB181123B glow, captured by the Gemini North telescope. The back glow is marked with a circle.
International Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / K. Paterson and W. Fong / Travis Rector / Mahdi Zamani and Davide de Martin
Astronomers have discovered one of the most powerful types of explosions known, and at an incredible distance. Scientists used the Gemini-North telescope on top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii to see the glow of a brief gamma-ray burst located on the other side of the universe, at a staggering 10 billion light-years away.
“We certainly did not expect to discover a distant SGRB, as they are extremely rare and very weak,” Northwestern University astrophysicist Wen-fai Fong said in a statement.
Fong is a lead author on an article detailing the discovery published Tuesday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
SGRBs are believed to occur when two neutron stars collide with each other, and the resulting glare seen at a cosmic distance can be fast and fleeting, making it especially remarkable to catch one that far away. The light that astronomers saw probably lasted only a few hours, and then they spent 10 billion years traveling in our direction to finally reach the mirrors of telescopes on Earth.
That means the observed explosion actually occurred when the universe was in its teens, less than 4 billion years after the Big Bang.
Researchers believe powerful blast: Gamma rays are the most energetic form of light, and SGRBs can be a million trillion times brighter than the sun, known as SGRB181123B is the most distant SGRB with an optical glow ever recorded .
Getting to watch him was a combination of luck and quick action. The distant fireworks were first identified by NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory on Thanksgiving night 2018. Within hours, the team remotely accessed the Gemini telescope in Hawaii. More follow-up observations from Chile and Arizona helped complete the picture of the explosion and where it originated.
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“With SGRBs, it won’t detect anything if it reaches the sky too late,” Fong explained. “But once in a while, if you react fast enough, you will land on a really beautiful detection like this.”
In addition to being breathtakingly powerful and distant, the discovery provides a window into a busy time when stars and galaxies were rapidly forming in the young universe.
“It has long been unknown how long it takes for neutron stars, particularly those producing SGRB, to fuse,” Fong said. “Finding an SGRB at this point in the history of the universe suggests that, at a time when the universe was forming a lot of stars, the pair of neutron stars may have merged quite quickly.”
The hope is that this is not the first successful detection of a tantrum from a time when the universe was undergoing some very tumultuous growing pains.
“We believe we are discovering the tip of the iceberg in terms of distant SGRBs,” said Kerry Paterson, first author of the study. “That motivates us to continue studying past events and intensely examine future ones.”
