The Brightest Gamma Ray Burst Ever Detected
Gamma ray bursts are the most energetic phenomena in the universe since the Big Bang itself, emitting enough energy to sterilize entire regions of their home galaxies. Such events might occur in a galaxy once every few million years or so, but there are a lot of galaxies out there, so we detect gamma ray bursts nearly every day.
GRB 22 1009a
The burst officially called GRB 22 1009a likely heralded the birth of a new black hole. It temporarily blinded the Fermi, gamma ray telescope when the Geral Swift Observatory and xmm Newton telescopes imaged the bright x ray Afterglow. They found more than 20 rings of X, ray light, scattering off dust clouds in our galaxy. Its estimated that a burst this powerful might occur only once every 10 000 years – and that means this was probably the most energetic gamma ray burst to reach Earth since the dawn of human civilization. That’s why astronomers dubbed GRB 22 1009a, the brightest of all time or the BOAT.
Follow Up Observations
Since the initial Outburst, a number of follow up observations have been made at all wavelengths to figure out just what the hell caused it and those findings have turned up a number of surprising results that call into question our understanding of gamma ray bursts. For example, GRBs are thought to Mark the beginning of a supernova, but neither Hubble nor the James Webb Space telescopes found any evidence of one. Not only that, but it was surprisingly faint in the radio spectrum, despite the fact that GRB should emit very strongly at all wavelengths. It was so weird and amazing that a series of papers about the BOAT were published in a special issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
The brightest grb ever seen
Gamma Ray Bursts
Gamma ray bursts (GRBs) are generally classified by their duration. Short GRBs last under two seconds and are thought to be caused when a pair of neutron stars collide. This collision sets off what is called a ‘kill Anova’. By contrast, long GRBs can last anywhere from two seconds to several hours. It is thought that these longer bursts occur when the core of a very massive star collapses to form a black hole.
The Afterglow
Both scenarios produce an initial burst of gamma ray emission, followed by a longer lasting Afterglow. The Afterglow is created when the leading edge of the jet collides with the surrounding interstellar medium. The shock front produces emission at longer wavelengths starting from X-rays, but going all the way to radio. It is by studying the Afterglow that we can learn about the properties of the surrounding medium, the physics of the GRB itself and piece together the puzzle of what caused the burst in the first place.
Supernovae
Now, if the GRB came from a black hole inside of a collapsing star, there is a third act to follow. The black hole’s jet ignites runaway fusion inside the star’s interior that explodes the star from the inside out. The result is an extremely energetic Supernova, sometimes called a hypernova. These long duration bursts are so energetic they can easily outshine their host galaxies and we have detected some extremely bright bursts so far.
GRB 22 1009a
When GRB 22 1009a was first detected, it was without question the brightest GRB ever seen.
The Brightest Gamma Ray Burst in Human History
The Fermi Gamma Ray Telescope recently detected the brightest gamma ray burst in human history. This burst was so bright, it actually blinded the instruments on the telescope. It blew all of the other bursts out of the water, and was even detected by instruments that weren’t even designed for this purpose.
The very first detection of the burst was picked up a day earlier by Voyager 1, which is now in Interstellar space. A day later, the bursts reached the inner solar system and was detected by the ISSAs, Gaia, satellite at L2 and then the Integral satellite in CIS lunar space about one second later. It was then detected by Fermi and GRB Alpha in low Earth orbit. The burst even irradiated Earth’s ionosphere.
The bursts continued to L1, where it was detected by the ACE and Wind spacecraft studying the Sun, and then a few minutes later it was detected at Mars by Maven and Mars Odyssey.
A Rare Event
Something this bright doesn’t happen very often. In fact, the burst was calculated as being a nearly once in ten thousand year event. Human civilization is only about six thousand years old, so it’s quite possible that this is literally the brightest gamma ray burst in human history.
Fortunately, we just happen to have telescopes in space that could study it. However, the burst is behaving in ways that really don’t make sense. Bursts like these are understood to be associated with dying, massive stars, but so far the burst hasn’t shown any evidence of a supernova.
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The Brightest Gamma Ray Burst Ever Detected
The boat was the brightest gamma ray burst ever detected, but weirdly the boats, radio, Afterglow wasnt unusually bright at all. It gets even more interesting when you look at how the radio visible and x ray emission faded out over time and thats. What were seeing here in these data points.
Each color corresponds to some time after the burst over the last 50 years of studying grbs, a number of standard models have been developed that describe how the Afterglow Fades across different wavelengths, but when the models were run against the boat, they matched up with the visible And x, ray emission quite well, but largely came up short on the radio.
The Boat’s Energy Concentrated Into a Tight Beam
The modeling also indicated that, although the boat was the brightest ever seen, it may not have actually been all that powerful in terms of the total energy released. Rather, it may have appeared so bright because all of its energy was concentrated into a very tight beam and that beam happened to be aimed directly at Earth. Its kind of like how a pocket laser is far more intense than a Searchlight, even though it uses far less energy.
The Boat Originated 1.9 Billion Light Years Away
Now before you get any ideas, no, you should never ever look directly into a gamma ray burst or a laser. It also turns out that the boat originated at a redshift of 0.15 and that works out to about 1.9 billion light years away, believe it or not, thats, actually not particularly far for a gamma ray burst.
Strange Boat with No Supernova Detected
Long bursts are thought to come from dying, massive stars and the reason we believe that is because, as the Afterglow of the burst Fades out, the underlying light from the Supernova Starts to become visible, so the light curve of the burst tends to stabilize and stay bright as the Supernova takes over.
No Evidence of Supernova
Recently, something strange was discovered when a boat was observed – there was no Supernova detected, even though the boat came from a direction that was almost directly in line with the plane of the Milky Way galaxy. This means its light had to pass through some 60 a thousand light years of our galaxy, which is Laden with dust, if a supernova really happened, then Dust in our galaxy could have blocked up to 99 of its visible light.
James Webb Space Telescope Captures Spectra
Fortunately, longer wavelengths, like near infrared, can sidestep much of this dust. To that end. The James Webb Space Telescope captured Spectra of the boat at both near and mid infrared wavelengths. In fact, this was the first time the mid infrared spectrum of a grb had ever been obtained.
No Excess Submission or Changes Detected
But if a supernova were taking place, there should have been some excess submission or changes in web Spectrum over time, but neither of those effects were detected and that might be because there was more dust at work here than just that from our galaxy alone.
The Mystery of the BOAT
A near infrared image made with the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed an extended feature emerging from a burst, which is actually its home Galaxy. This Galaxy appears to be a spiral seen Edge on, meaning the Supernova would have had to penetrate through its home Galaxy’s disk and then through the disk of the Milky Way before arriving at Earth. This could explain why the Supernova’s infrared signature was weakened by two galaxies worth of dust.
The Disappearance of Star N6946BH1
In 2015, the mass of star N6946BH1 disappeared without a trace. This could mean that there was no Supernova at all, as the black hole that formed inside the collapsing star managed to kick off the gamma ray burst, but then swallow its own Supernova. This could present us with a new kind of intermediate case, where a massive star’s core collapses to create a black hole which in turn kicks off a gamma ray burst. The black hole then gets so massive, so quickly, that it reverses and consumes the subsequent Supernova.
Colliding Neutron Stars
Alternatively, the burst may not have been triggered from a collapsing massive star at all, but rather by a pair of colliding neutron stars. Such events trigger a shorter and less energetic gamma ray burst. If the burst was confined to an extremely narrow Jet and aimed directly towards Earth, it would make the burst appear bright enough to become the BOAT. However, colliding neutron stars are thought to produce GRBs that are only between a few milliseconds to no more than a couple of seconds long.
Outburst Lasted 600 Seconds
In 2022, rust in the jod and collaborators reported the discovery of a kill Anova associated with a GRB that lasted nearly a minute. This led to the assumption that the Outburst was a collapsing massive star. However, the Outburst lasted 600 seconds, which meant it had to be a pair of colliding neutron stars that managed to create a GRB that lasted up to 10 minutes longer, with an ultra collimated jet aimed directly at Earth.
Strong Magnetic Fields
Such jets would require extremely strong magnetic fields in order to collimate them so tightly. As such, these fields would polarize the emission of the initial burst, with the stronger fields leading to more polarized light. To this end, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) was used to measure the polarization of the Afterglow.
Rings Surrounding the Burst
The IXPE found that, while the polarization was high, it wasn’t the highest recorded for a burst. However, the boat was glimpsed through the plane of the Galaxy light passing through Galactic clouds, which scatter and form the Rings surrounding the burst. It’s possible that these dust clouds might have reduced the polarization of the light in some way.
21 Clouds
In total, 21 Rings were counted, and that means the burst had to pass through no fewer than 21 clouds, ranging from as close as 700 light years from Earth to as many as 61 000 light years. More observations are needed as the Afterglow Fades to know what effect the dust is really having on the polarization. The more layers of dust the light passes through, the more Rings are produced.
The Boat GRB: Probing the Structure of Our Galaxy
On the other side of the Galaxy, astronomers have discovered a phenomenon known as the Boat GRB. This burst of light is passing through the geometric plane of the Galaxy at an angle of incidence of about 4 degrees. This has allowed the most distant Rings to be formed above the plane of our galaxy.
Why is There Dust Above the Galactic Plane?
It turns out that our galaxy is not perfectly flat, but rather has a warp on either end. On the far side, the warp is lifted upward, allowing just enough dust present for the boat GRB to pass through. This has allowed astronomers to probe at least a portion of the structure of our galaxy.
What We Know About the Dust Clouds
We now know where the dust clouds lie along the line of sight to the boat. This information will tell us more about the history of our Galaxys formation, which includes mergers and collisions with smaller galaxies.
More Observations Being Conducted
This past winter, the boat disappeared behind the Sun for a couple of months, but it has since reappeared. More observations are being conducted now, as there are so many questions left to be addressed and so much more to be learned.
The boat GRB has allowed astronomers to gain insight into the structure of our galaxy and the history of its formation. Further observations are being conducted to answer the many questions left to be addressed.
