Gamma Ray Revolution: The Longest Burst and Cosmic Mysteries Unveiled

This is Spacetime Series twenty eight, Episode one hundred and forty seven, for broadcast on the seventeenth December twenty twenty five. Coming up on space Time, discovery of the longest gamma ray burst ever detected, an elemental bounty discovered in a supernova remnant, and for the first time, the International Space Station is full up with no parking spaces available. All that and more coming up on space Time. Welcome to space Time with Stuart Gary. Astronomers have discovered the longest gamma ray burst ever detected, lasting over seven hours, and in the process changing sciences understanding about the death of the most massive stars. Have been trying to work out exactly what was responsible for this extraordinary cosmic explosion ever since it was first detected on July second. The initial observations have been reported in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Gamma ray bursts are incredibly rare put Simply, they're the most powerful explosions since the Big Bang of Creation thirteen point eight billion years ago, and they come in two broad types. There are short period gamma ray bursts, which lasts just a few seconds and are thought to be caused by the merger of two neutron stars forming a black hole, or by the merger of a neutron star into a black hole. Then there are long period gamma ray bursts. They can last for more than ten seconds and are thought to be caused by the explosive Supernerva deaths of the most massive stars, turning them into black holes. The specific gamma ray burst, named GiB twenty five zero seven zero two B, continued not for hours but day, and is now thought to have herald a new kind of stellar explosion. Astronomers still think the best explanation for this outburst is a black hole consuming a star, but they disagree on exactly how this would have happened. Possibilities include a black hole weighing a few thousand times the mass of our Sun, shredding a star that passed too close, or alternatively, a much smaller black hole merging within consuming its stellar companion. One of the sturdies. Authors Eliza Knights, from George Washington University in NASA's gotad's based Flight Center in green Belt, Maryland, says the initial wave of gamma rays lasted at least seven hours and that's nearly twice the duration of the longest gamma ray bursts previously seen. It was unlike anything observed in the last half century, and it had some really unusual properties. On average, a gamma ray burst is detected somewhere in the universe at least once a day. They can appear anywhere in the sky without warning. Usually they're very distant events, with even the closest known example erupting more than one hundred million lie years away, But the record setting duration of the July burst places it in a class by itself. Of the roughly fifteen thousand gamma ray bursts observed since the phenomenon was first recognized back in nineteen seventy three, none have been as long, and only around half a dozen have even come close. Because opportunities to study such events are so rare, and because many reveal new ways to create gamma ray bursts, astronomers are especially excited about the July event. All gamma ray bursts are thought to be generated by matter falling into a black hole, but not all the matter falling into a black hole is immediately consumed. Most of it first forms an accretion disc around the black hole. There it's crushed and torn apart at the subatomic level, most will pass beyond the point of no return called the event horizon, after which it falls forever into the black hole's singularity. But black holes are messy eaters, and some of the material is caught up in magnetic fields, which channels the matter into tight jets of particles that's stream out across the universe at almost the speed of light, in the process, creating gamma rays as they go. The thing is, none of this is thought to be able to readily create jets able to keep firing for days on end, and that's why twenty five zero seven zero two B poses such unique puzzle. The gamma ray burst monitor on NASA's Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope discovered the burst and triggered multiple times over the course of three hours. It was also detected by the Burst Alert Telescope on NASAs Swift Space Telescope, the Russian Kronos instrument on NASA's Wind mission, the gamma ray in neutron spectrometer on the Psyche spacecraft that's the NASA mission currently on its way to the asteroid sixteen Psyche, and by Japan's monitor of all sky X ray image instrument aboard the International Space Station. The thing is, this burst went on for so long that no Hegenergy monitor in space was equipped to four observe it, and so it took the combined power of instruments on mudible spacecraft better understand the event. The white field X ray telescope on China's Einstein Probe also detected the burst in X rays and showed that a signal was already present the previous day. The first precise location came early July third, when Swift's X ray telescope imaged the burst of the constellation Scutum that's near the crowded, dusty plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Now, given this location and the day earlier X ray detection, astronomers initially wondered whether this might be a different type of outburst from somewhere within our own Milky Way galaxy. But images from some of the largest telescopes on Earth, including those that the Keken Gemini Observatories in Hawaii and the European Southern Observatories VLT or Very Large Telescope in Cele indicated that there was a galaxy at those coordinates, and so astronomers turned to NASA's Hubble space telescope for a clearer view. Andrew Levin from Redbound University in the Netherlands says it definitely is another galaxy, proving that it was a distant and powerful explosion, but he admits it was a very strange looking one. He says the Hubble data is a bit ambiguous. It shows either two galaxies merging or one galaxy with a dark band of dust splitting the core into two pieces. And more recent images captured by NASA's web space telescope strongly support Levin's interpretation. The web observersions clearly show the gamma ray burst shining through this dustly and spilling across the galaxy. In late August, astronomers using web and the very large telescope to determine the galaxy's distance and other properties concluded that the burst was remarkably powerful, erupting with the equivalent energy omitted by one thousand suns, shining for ten billion years. Amazingly, this galaxy so far away that light from this explosion began racing outward some eight billion years ago, long before our Sun and solar system had even begun to form a comprehensive s study of the X ray light following the main burst used to observations from SWIFT, NASA's Chandra X ray observatory, and the agency's new Start Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array mission. The SWIFT and new Start data revealed rapid flares occurring up to two days after the burst, discovery that continued accretion of matter about the black hole powered and outflow that produced these flares, but the process continued for far longer than possible in standard gamma ray burst models. The late X ray flares showed that the blast power source simply refused to shut off, which means the black hole kept feeding for at least a few days after the initial eruption. Affermi and SWIFT data indicate a typical, if unusually long gamma ray burst, but spectroscopic WEB observations didn't find a supernova explosion, which typically follows a stellar collapse gamma ray burst, although it may have been obscured by its dust and distance. The Einstein probe saw X rays a day before the burst on new Start tracked the X ray flares up to two days after, but neither was typical for gamma ray bursts, In addition, a detailed study shows that the host galaxy appears to be very different from the typically small galaxies that host most stellar collapse gamma ray bursts. It turns out this galaxy surprisingly large, with more than twice the mass of our own Milky Way. Now, in both the two scenarios we've discussed here, the black hole should have consumed the star in about a day. The first involves an intermediate mass black hole, one with a few thousand solar masses and an event horizon a few times larger than the Earth. As a star wanders too close, it becomes stretched spaghettified if you will, along its orbit by gravitational forces from the black hole, and is then rapidly consumed. This describes what astronomers call a tital disruption event, but one caused by a rarely observed middleweight black hole with a mass much greater than those born in stellar collapses and much smaller than the behemoth super massive black holes found at the centers of galaxies. Right now, the gamma ray team of favoring a different scenario, because if this burst is like the others, the black hole's mass must be more similar to that of our Sun. Their model envisions a black hole with about three solar masses with an event horizon just eighteen kilometers, a cross orbiting and then merging with a companion star. The star would be of similar mass to the black hole, but much smaller than the Sun. That's because its hydrogen atmospheres already be mostly stripped away, leaving just a dense helium core, forming an object, which astronomers call a helium star. Now, in both cases, matter from the star first flows towards the black hole, then collects into a vast decretion disc, from which material makes its final plunge into the black hole. At some point in this process, the system begins to shine bright in X rays. Then, as the black hole rapidly consumes the star's matter, gamma ray jets are blasted outwards. But notably, the helium star merger model makes a unique prediction. Once the black hole is turned immersed within the main body of the star, feasting on it from the inside, if you will, the energy it releases explodes the star and powers a super and ova. Unfortunately, this explosion occurs behind enormous clouds of dust and gas, meaning even the power of the web Space telescope wouldn't be enough to see the expected super and ova. While the smirking gun evidence to explain exactly what happened in July, the second we'll have to wait for future events. GB twenty five H seven zero two B has already provided new insights into what is now the longest gamma ray burst ever seen. This is space time. Still, the Calm astronomers have for the first time detected the elements colorin and potassium in a supernova remnant, and the International Space Station has been forced to put out the fully occupied sign for the first time, with all eight of its docking ports now in use. All that and more, still, the Calm on space time astronomers have for the first time ever detected the element's chlorine and potassium in a supernova remnant. The discovery, reported in the journal Nature Astronomy, was made using CHRISM, the X ray Imaging and Spectroscopic Mission spacecraft. CHRISM observed the elements in the supernova remnant Cassiopea A, which are the remains of a star that exploded some three hundred and forty years ago. This expanding cloud of debris is located some eleven thousand light years away. In the northern constellation Cassiopeia and is now some ten light years across. Other than hydrogen and helium, which were produced in the Big Bang thirteen point eight billion years ago, all the elements in our universe are manufactured in stars, either during their lives or when they die. This includes the iron in your blood and the calcium in your bone. Heat and pressure fuse lighter elements like carbon and oxygen into progressively heavier ones like neon an ion, creating onion like layers of materials in side stars, but nuclear reactions also take place during explosive events like supernovae, which occur when a star runs out of fuel and collapses and explodes. Elemental abundances and different locations in a stellar wreckage can tell astronomers a lot about the progenitor star and its explosion, even after hundreds or thousands of years. Some elements like oxygen, carbon, and neon are more common than others and are therefore easier to detect and trace back to a particular part of a star's life, but other elements like chlorine potassium are far more elusive. Since scientists have less data about them, it's more difficult to model where in a star they formed, but these rarer elements still play important roles in life on Earth. Potassium, for example, helps cells and muscles function, and so astronomers are interested in facing its cosmic origins. This studies lead author Tashiki Sato from Menji University in Turkyo, says the discovery helps illustrate how the deaths of stars and life on Earth are fundamentally intertwined. As Carl Sagan once said, we are all star dust. Now, thanks to chrism, astronomers have a better idea of when and house stars might make crucial get hard to define elements. The roughly circular Kassia pa supernova remnant as a super dense neutron star at center the remains of the progenitor star's original core. Astronomers using NASA's Chander X ray observatory had previously identified signatures for iron, silicon, sulfur, and other elements within Kassia PAA. In the hunt for other elements, the authors use chrism to look at the remnant in December twenty twenty three, and they were able to pick out the signatures for chlorine potassium, determining that the remnant contains much higher ratios than expected. They also detected a possible indication of phosphorus, which had previously already been discovered in Kassiopeia A through infrared observations. The studies authors think stellar activity could have disrupted the layers of nuclear fusion inside the star before it exploded. That kind of upheaval may have led to persistent, large scale churning of material inside the star that created the sorts of conditions where chlorine potassium formed in abundance. The authors also combined their Chrism observations with those from the Chandra Earth orbiting X ray telescope, showing that the elements were concentrated in the southeastern and northern parts of the remnant. This lopsided distribution may mean the star itself had undergone asymmetries before it exploded, something that the Chandra data had previously suggested. The authors had always suspected that a key part might be asymmetry, and now they have more evidence to support that hypothesis. But there's still a lot they don't understand about how stars explode and how they distribute all their elements across the cosmos. Being able to make measurements with good statistical p decision of these rarer elements allows astronomers to develop a better understanding of the nuclear fusion process going on inside stars before and during their soupinova explosions, and spacecraft like CHRISM helps to accelerate that understanding. This report from mess ATV. CHRISM is our newest X ray telescope in space. It's a Jackson NASA collaborative mission with ease of participation and will revolutionize X ray observations of the universe. It does this with a one of a kind sensor that captures data with thirty six super cooled pixels. Wow, yes, you heard that right. This groundbreaking detector isn't measured in megapixels. It's a six by six grid of thirty six pixels, but they're unlike any others. Although this detector, called Resolve can create low resolution X ray images, that is not what makes it unique. Each pixel and Resolve is a microclorimeter, so it can measure tiny amounts of heat. A six stage system cools it to fifty millikelvins, or a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. This extreme low temperature allows Resolve to measure how much a pixel warms when absorbs a single X ray and therefore measure the energy of that one particle of light. It's basically a precise way of measuring the X ray's color. As a result, CHRISM can create the most detailed X ray spectrum ever for distant objects. This spectrum can give a great deal of useful information like temperature, what elements are present and in what quantities, and how fast an object is moving toward or away from us, even if we can only see it as a dot in the sky to distant to resolve details. This would be a revolutionary achievement for a detector with a single pixel, but Resolve has thirty six. This allows CHRISM to observe extended objects that aren't point source dots and create spectrum maps of their different regions that can reveal speed and temperature differences in extremely hot gases. Using that information, scientists can determine how nebulae and galaxy clusters have evolved and interacted over time. The Resolve detector was invented and built at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The detector's success in CHRISM will enable Goddard to further the design and follow up with X ray microcalorimeters with hundreds or even thousands of pixels. So while it may not sound as impressive as four k or fifty megapixels, the resolve detector on CHRISM will be revolutionizing our understanding of the large scale, high energy universe, and that's pretty amazing for a mere three dozen. Pixels this space time still to come, the International Space Station puts out the full up sign with no spare parking spaces available, and later in the science report, a new steady claims flavornoids may help improve insulin resistance. All that and more still to come on space time. For the first time in its history, the International Space Station is fully occupied, with all eight of its docking ports now in use. The House full sign went up following the redocking of the north Rock Brumman Signet's cargo ship under the Earth facing port of the Unity module. The orbiting OUTPURST is currently playing host to a pair of SpaceX Dragon spacecraft Signus cargo ship we just mentioned, Jacks's HTVX one cargo ship, two Rose Cosmos Say Use capsules, and two rose Cosmos Progress cargo ships. The Signus is flying Northrop Grumman's twenty third commercial resupply mission for NASA and was repositioned using the station's Canada two rodbody arm. NASA, Northrop Grumman, and los Cosmos jointly planned the move to clear the wave for the arrival of THESS twenty eighth spacecraft late last month and it's near three person crew. The Signas is expected to remain docked until March, when it will depart loaded with up to eleven thousand pounds of trash and excess gear and then re enter its atmosphere were all burn up. Meanwhile, the ten member Expedition seventy three seventy four crew are about to drop down to seven with the scheduled departure of the Sawyer's MS twenty seven spacecraft and its three person crew Soliated to undock from the procal module and return to Earth, landing in Kazakhstan. This is Space Time, and time that to take another brief look at some of the other stories making news in science this week with the Science Report. A new study claims flavonoids, chemicals found in dark colored fruits, orange citrus, tea, white wine, and dark chocolate, may help improve insulin resistance. Previous research has linked flavonoid intake with benefits for cancer and blood pressure. Now are reporting the general plus one examine data from Australian health and nutrition surveys showing a link between the intake of these foods and lower insulin resistance, a condition that can lead to type two diabetes and other metabolic events. Now, this type of study can't prove flavonoids other reason for the link, but the authors say their lab tests were able to show evidence of flavonoids affecting insulin resistance in cells. The Israeli Defense Forces banned Chinese vehicles from their bases and production facilities, issuing blanket orders at any military personnel or civilian employees who own Chinese made cars must park them well away from bases. The new IDEF regulations are based on security concerns about data leaks from built in cameras, GPS technology, and other sensors which are fitted to these vehicles and which can be remotely controlled and monitored from China. The fears images, audio, or other data collected by these devices is being sent back to China and then hand it over to Chinese intelligence agencies. Earlier this year, The United Kingdom imposed a similar ban on parking electric vehicles built with Chinese manufactured parts need British military bases because of their own espionage feares. Concerns were also recently raised in Australia about Chinese manufactured solar panels, batteries and inverters, which are equipped with unexplained additional communications technology, allowing Beijing to remotely control them and change their settings or turn them off without any local approval, and concerns about Chinese spying don't end there. In twenty three, the Australian government began removing cameras made by Chinese companies from government facilities, also on the grounds of security. A new study suggests that over the past fifty years, top hit songs have grown to become simpler, more negative, and to contain more stress related words. The finding, published in the journal Scientific Reports, analyzed song lyrics from the Billboard Hot one hundred charts between nineteen seventy three and twenty twenty three now that's some two thy one hundred and eighty six songs, and have found that these changes in the lyrics coincided with increasing reds of depression and anxiety, and also with increased levels of negativity in the news media and literature. The authors also looked at major events, and they found that the Islamic terrorist attacks of September the eleven, two thousand and one, and the beginning of the COVID nineteen pandemic in twenty nineteen were associated with lyrics becoming more complex and positive and containing fewer stress words, which the authors say might signify some form of escapism stressful periods. After just a week, it's already clear that kids across Australia are easily getting around the federal government's social media ban for under sixteen's. The band, which affects some two million children, was designed to protect them from cyber bullying and inappropriate material online, but it was hardly selective in nature, not including gaming chat rooms or left wing social media platforms like blue Sky. But as forecast, kids are fighting back. Kids are easily getting around the restrictions by simply switching to a range of other platforms like Lemonade, Yop, WhatsApp and cover Star, or by simply scanning an older friend's face by using VPNs, or by using their parents' social media accounts and the age verification technology itself has also turned out to be fairly poor, with many under sixteen year olds being judged as over sixteen. But the software technology editor Alexe Harrovruyt from tech Advice Start Life says, all of these workarounds were always going to happen. I mean that was already known before the band came into place. There were stories of teenagers finding out how But as tofa. Field on X who's a commentator who was showing as of information about voting and how to vote your preferences in the last federal versions of Australia, he said, look, parents have an obligation to show and pick their children if you get around the social media band and they can't talk to their parents because somebody has subjected them to online harm, which honestly, we should teach the children how to deal with if they've been subjected to something and well they can't talk to the teachers or the government about it because it's against all. The only people that have left that can trust other parents. If the children I had to get online safely and they can talk to their parents about it, we have some trust there. But then worried that your kids are going to be doing this thing behind your back, which is what the government rules have created this reality. So yeah, week one, it's chaos already. Of course, Albour Prime Minister. Has said it's the finest thing he's done all throughout history. I've seen this on x under Elon Musk and other people posting. The same thing. But the people trying to sensor speech are never the good guys. And that's really what it comes down to. Now you're a multiple world when you've won in creative writing and this time you've won four controversy. Oh yes, Well there's the Consensus Group Awards I've been giving allso over twenty years, mainly to companies for their innovations in software, agricultural technology, medical technology, hardware. It's a business awards, but I also have an IT Writer's Award which are going for just about as long. Well, it's the most controversial writer award, and it's an. Article I wrote about Telstra and their. Ten dollars a month's discount which removed a Wi Fi seven router that costs seven hundred dollars to buy if you've bought it separately. It removes the. Four G five G simcard back up in case your wide connection goes down. If you were to have one of those in Telstra, it would cost you a lot more than ten dollars a month. You also need some of the AI fixed for any Wi Fi problems that you have, And really this discount makes it easy for Telstra not to serve you as a customer properly and all for you to save warping thirty two point nine cents a day. So I just said this was a terrible discount, and Telster was playing a joke on all of us to offer this, and their PR people said, oh, competitive was the market. I said, well, it's still bad. And here I am a few months winning an. Award for pointing that out. And I did tell tells for about it that I've heard nothing about. That's Alexa Harrol royd im take advice, start life, and that's the show for now. Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through bytes dot com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider, and from space Time with Stuart Gary dot com. Space Time's also broadcast through the National Science Foundation, on Science Own Radio and on both iHeartRadio and tune In Radio. And you can help to support our show by visiting the space Time store for a range of promotional merchandising goodies, or by becoming a Spacetime Patron, which gives you access to triple episode commercial free versions of the show, as well as lots of burness audio content which doesn't go to wear, access to our exclusive Facebook group, and other rewards. Just go to space Time with Stewart Gary dot com for full details. You've been listening to space Time with Stuart Garry. This has been another quality podcast production from bytes dot com.