(C) NASA
This story was originally published by NASA and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Gamma-ray Bursts: Harvesting Knowledge From the Universe’s Most Powerful Explosions [1]
[]
Date: 2024-02
The backstory takes us to 1963, when the U.S. Air Force launched the Vela satellites to detect gamma rays from banned nuclear weapons tests. The United States had just signed a treaty with the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union to prohibit tests within Earth’s atmosphere, and the Vela satellites ensured all parties’ compliance. Instead, the satellites stumbled upon 16 gamma-ray events. By 1973, scientists could rule out that both Earth and the Sun were the sources of these brilliant eruptions. That’s when astronomers at Los Alamos National Laboratory published the first paper announcing these bursts originate beyond our solar system. Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center quickly confirmed the results through an X-ray detector on the IMP 6 satellite. It would take another two decades and contributions from the Italian Space Agency’s BeppoSax and NASA’s Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory to show that these outbursts occur far beyond our Milky Way galaxy, are evenly distributed across the sky, and are extraordinarily powerful. The closest GRB on record occurred more than 100 million light-years away.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://science.nasa.gov/universe/gamma-ray-bursts-harvesting-knowledge-from-the-universes-most-powerful-explosions/
Published and (C) by NASA
Content appears here under this condition or license: Public Domain.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/nasa/
