Back in October 2022 astronomers detected the most powerful explosion ever recorded from deep space. At the time the only thing experts could say for sure was that the explosion was a massive release of gamma radiation some 2.4 billion light-years away. Now new data has revealed some interesting things about the gamma-ray burst.
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00:04 Back in October 2022, astronomers detected the most powerful explosion ever recorded from deep space.
00:10 The event was so big it was nicknamed "Boat" for brightest of all time,
00:14 officially named GRB-221009A. At the time, the only thing experts could say for sure
00:20 was that the explosion was a massive release of gamma radiation some 2.4 billion light-years away.
00:26 Later, it was concluded it originated from the death of a star and the birth of a black hole.
00:31 Now, scientists say the evolving light has revealed something extremely surprising,
00:35 which is that the gamma-ray burst was actually extremely ordinary.
00:39 Astrophysicist Peter Blanchard had this to say about it,
00:42 "It looks fairly normal in the context of other supernovae associated with less
00:47 energetic gamma-ray bursts. You might expect that the same collapsing star producing a very
00:51 energetic and bright GRB would also produce a very energetic and bright supernova. But it
00:56 turns out that's not the case. Gamma-ray bursts are the most energetic of all cosmic radiation
01:01 events, releasing the same amount of energy in 10 seconds as our sun produces in 10 billion years."
01:07 Another surprise is that astronomers were not able to detect the heavy elements they expected
01:11 from a GRB of this magnitude, meaning our understanding of these elements' creation
01:16 is still incomplete.
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