GRB221009A surrounded by dust rings
ESA/XMM-Newton/M. Rigoselli (INAF)
The most powerful explosions ever seen could shatter our understanding of how these cosmic cataclysms, called long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), work. The burst was discovered in October 2022 and has proven difficult to explain despite continued observation and analysis by researchers around the world.
When the burst called GRB221009A was discovered, astronomers called it “The Boat” – the brightest ever. Eric Burns Louisiana State University and his colleagues compared it to other GRBs and found that this bright event probably occurs only once every 10,000 years, so the nickname fits.
“This is probably the brightest event to hit the planet since human civilization began,” Burns says. “The energy in this object is so extreme that even if you converted the entire sun into pure energy, this event would be unmatched. Nothing comparable.”
Other astronomers continue to monitor the burst’s afterglow to identify the mechanism behind the burst. Most long GRBs are thought to form when the stellar core runs out of fuel and collapses, forming a black hole and churning the remaining stellar matter into powerful jets.
However, when other researchers observed GRB afterglow at radio wavelengths, what they found did not quite match that simple model. It evolved relatively slowly, but we expect a steep rise in energy as the jet evolves.
Also, for these types of GRBs, it is generally expected that a supernova will occur several weeks after the initial outburst. This is because the energy from the collapse of the star’s core passes through the outer layers and explodes. But it’s not clear if that happened with GRB221009A. “We also disagree on whether we’ve seen supernovae. If we haven’t, our understanding of these events is really broken,” Barnes says.
“We have this idea of what it should look like in a day, a week, a month, but none of these can line up in a consistent way,” Barnes said. increase. “If you really dig down, all our models are failing.” Astronomers continue to monitor GRB’s afterglow and work to understand it, but so far BOAT has been very unsuccessful. strange, we may need to build a new model for how GRB works more generally.
topic:
