Mysterious burst of energy tracked to unlikely source in universe and could change everything we know
ASTRONOMERS have uncovered a mysterious, highly-luminescent beam of light in space.
The bright light, called a gamma ray, originated from a deep-space explosion approximately 1.1billion light-years from Earth.
Gamma rays are a penetrating form of electromagnetic radiation that develop from the radioactive decay of atomic nuclei.
Researchers believe this specific explosion was caused by the collision of two ultra-dense neutron stars – or the collapsed core of a massive supergiant star.
This new discovery could shift scientists' understanding of how the universe's brightest lights are created.
The findings were detailed in a new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy on December 7.
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The Study
Astronomers reveal in the study that they tracked the long blast of bright light after it was detected by multiple telescopes in December 2021.
The gamma-ray burst shot through space for 50 seconds, which helped researchers locate the region from which it came.
To help with their search, the astronomers began scouring deep space for the aftermath of a supernova explosion.
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However, to their surprise, none were found anywhere near the gamma-ray burst.
"When we followed this long gamma-ray burst, we expected it would lead to evidence of a massive star collapse," Wen-fai Fong, an assistant professor of astronomy and physics at Northwestern University in Illinois and co-author of the Nature Astronomy paper, said in a statement.
"Instead, what we found was very different," she added.
Thanks to near-infrared imagery taken of the blast site, the researchers found evidence of an incredibly faint object called a kilonova.
A kilonova can be described as a transient explosion that occurs when two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole merge.
The explosion reached peak brightness just a few days before the gamma-ray burst was detected and then vanished to black.
Scientists have seen kilonovas in the past, but normally those come from a short gamma-ray burst.
This new observation, however, shows that long gamma-ray bursts can also derive from kilonovas.
"There are a lot of objects in our night sky that fade quickly," Fong said.
"We image a source in different filters to obtain color information, which helps us determine the source’s identity. In this case, red color prevailed, and bluer colors faded more quickly."
"This color evolution is a telltale signature of a kilonova, and kilonovae can only come from neutron star mergers."
And the length of the gamma-ray burst wasn't the only peculiar part of the study.
The kilonova's host galaxy, dubbed SDSS J140910.47+275320.8, is also odd because it's young and star-forming.
That's the complete opposite of the only other universe we have seen host a neutron star merger event.
"After the detection of GW170817 and its association with a massive, red-and-dead host galaxy, many astronomers assumed that hosts of neutron star mergers in the near universe would look similar to NGC4993," said Anya Nugent, a Northwestern Ph.D. student in astronomy and study co-author.
"But this galaxy is fairly young, actively star-forming, and not actually that massive."
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"In fact, it looks more similar to short GRB hosts seen deeper in the universe. I think it changes our view of the types of galaxies we should watch when we’re searching for nearby kilonovae," she added.
According to Fong, these new findings challenge nearly two decades of findings about the origins of gamma-ray bursts.