iTWire - Gamma-ray burst GRB 080319B sets new space record

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Gamma-ray burst GRB 080319B sets new space record

by William Atkins

Saturday, 22 March 2008

Page 2 of 2

After two days of media reports, no skywatchers have come up to say they saw the record-shattering event. Did you?

Swift astronomers state that the star was an old stellar object in a previously unknown galaxy. It exploded in a gamma ray burst.

Most gamma ray burst occur when old, very massive, rapidly rotating stars die, but instead of exploding out in all direction, they concentrate an enormous amount of energy into two high-speed jets of radiation, primarily of gamma rays.

Gamma rays are a type of electromagnetic radiation (like visible light, x-rays, and ultraviolet radiation) that have the highest frequency and energy, and the lowest wavelength, of any of the types of radiation. Gamma rays are high energy photons that are produced by sub-atomic particle interactions such as in radioactive decay.

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most brightly (luminous) type of electromagnetic events in the universe, since the Big Bang explosion. They are flashes of gamma rays that occur in the universe only rarely (at least we only observe them once in a while). Astronomers might observe two or three of them each week.

Most of the explosions only last a few seconds to but can be as small as one millionth of a second or as long as a few minutes. The afterglow usually last much longer.

Read more about it and see the images taken by NASA at: "A Stellar Explosion You Could See on Earth!"

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