William Atkins
Sunday, 31 January 2010 05:17
Science -
Space
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Gamma rays bursts are powerful phenomena that occur in exotic places, like black holes. Scientists were pretty surprised when they found local gamma ray bursts in Earth’s upper atmosphere. Now, NASA's Firefly satellite will study them in greater detail.
Scientists operate artificial particle accelerators here on Earth, like the world’s largest one on the border with Switzerland and France—CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.
But, naturally occurring particle accelerators are operating in Earth’s upper atmosphere and they are said to have energy levels
“comparable to some of the most exotic environments in the universe.” [University of California—Santa Cruz press release (2.17.2005): “
New satellite observations of terrestrial gamma-ray flashes reveal surprising features of mysterious blasts from Earth”]
Surprisingly, scientists didn’t even know they existed until 1994 when the Burst And Transient Source Experiment (
BATSE) detected them in Earth’s upper atmosphere.
The BATSE was a scientific instrument that was onboard the now-defunct NASA Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (
CGRO), which was de-orbited from space in June 2000.
The orbiting instrument was used to calculate the location for all Gamma-Ray Bursts (
GRBs) that were detected in space.
GRBs are flashes of gamma rays that are associated with highly energetic electromagnetic explosions out in the Universe, such as those associated with supernova events that result in black holes.
Gamma rays are a type of electromagnetic radiation (light) that has a very high frequency and very short wavelength.
Other types of electromagnetic radiation are x-rays (like those used in medical facilities to see your bones), visible light (like from the Sun and the lamp overhead), ultraviolet (UV), infrared (heat), microwaves (like in microwave ovens), and radio waves (listen, you'll hear sounds coming in from them on your car radio).
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