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Birth Of A Blackhole Detected Across The Universe
The fact that no humans have been reported to have seen the event directly, the gamma-ray burst, an explosion that signals the violent death of a massive star, is changing theories of how these events look. Gamma ray bursts are typically accompanied by intense releases of other forms of radiation, from X-rays to visible light. The burst, which was dubbed as GRB 080819B, was first detected by the Swift satellite on March 19, while the spacecraft was serendipitously looking at another gamma-ray burst in the same area of the sky. The light that the burst emitted in the visible part of the spectrum was so intense that the burst would have been visible to the naked eye in the constellation Bootes for about 40 seconds, something that no other gamma-ray burst has ever been visible without the telescope. Jonathan Grindlay of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics calls “the birth pangs of a blackhole. This is the scream.” Grindlay wrote in an editorial accompanying a new study of the burst n the September 10 issue of the journal Nature. Grindlay added, “This means that the explosion happened 3 billion years before the sun or Earth even formed. When astronomers see such distant objects, they are in effect looking back in time. After the Swift detection, telescopes around the world were alerted and trained their eyes onto the new gamma-ray burst, giving scientists a highly detailed view of these explosions. Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com |
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