Nearly two years ago, astronomers’ instruments pointing into space began to go haywire due to an unusual event. It was an explosion of gamma radiation, the most powerful ever seen, originating from 2.4 billion light years from Earth.
The event was so powerful that it changed the Earth’s atmosphere for a short period, and today we know that the origin of the explosion was probably due to birth of a black hole. Recent analyses, however, seem to indicate that this phenomenon is more common than we thought.
“It seems rather normal compared to other supernovae associated with gamma-ray explosions (GRB) less energetic,” explains astrophysicist Peter Blanchard. “You would expect the star capable of generating a GRB of this magnitude to result in an equally energetic supernova, but that is not the case. We have an extremely bright GRB, but a normal supernova.“
What has intrigued scientists most, however, is the formation of elements resulting from this explosion. We know that heaviest elements in the Universe they are only formed in extreme events, such as the collision between two neutron stars, but is it possible that a supernova of this type can also generate them?
To answer this question, astronomers had to wait months for the brightness to dim. “The GRB was so bright that it obscured any supernova optical signature in the first few weeks,” Blanchard specifies.
After about six months, the researchers used the James Webb Space Telescope to observe the infrared light, revealing that – despite the brightness – the supernova explosion was relatively normal. The team later also discovered the lack of heavy elementsa result we didn’t expect.
Collisions between neutron stars, in fact, are not enough to explain the abundance of heavy elements in our Universe, and astronomers will therefore have to look for other potential sourcesbut for the moment the mystery remains.
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