Mega-Explosion Creates Biggest Burst of Gamma Radiation Ever Detected

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:01:54 PST

It's a good day for space discoveries. A Martian windstorm just cleaned Mars rover Spirit's solar panels, and those of us back on Earth got to enjoy the best gamma ray burst ever.

Scientists have now analyzed the explosion, which occurred late last year, and images of it have been released (see above). According to Discovery News:

The spectacular blast, which occurred in September in the Carina constellation, produced energies ranging from 3,000 to more than five billion times that of visible light, astrophysicists said.
"Visible light has an energy range of between two and three electron volts and these were in the millions to billions of electron volts," astrophysicist Frank Reddy of NASA said.

"If you think about it in terms of energy, X-rays are more energetic because they penetrate matter. These things don't stop for anything — they just bore through and that's why we can see them from enormous distances," Reddy said.

Gamma Rays of the Dead Shine Like a Nightmare into the Eyes of the Living

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:30:52 PDT

When you look into the heart of the Crab Nebula, you are staring at the gamma-radiation-soaked nightmare of history. You may have already known that this gorgeous nebula is the result of a supernova that Chinese and Arab astronomers recorded back in 1054. But what you didn't know is that the dead star became a pulsar that's still pouring ultrahot, oscillating gamma radiation out into the cosmos. Researchers in the U.K. are investigating this gamma-spewing pulsar, and Clara Moskowitz has the story at Space.com. Image credit: NASA/ESA and Jeff Hester (Arizona State University).

io9: gamma rays

Mega-Explosion Creates Biggest Burst of Gamma Radiation Ever Detected

Gamma Rays of the Dead Shine Like a Nightmare into the Eyes of the Living