The ever-present fog of energetic gamma rays permeating the universe isn't created by what astronomers expected, new observations from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveal, leaving scientists with a new cosmic mystery to solve.
The sky glows in gamma rays even far away from well-known bright sources, such as pulsars and gas clouds within our own Milky Way galaxy or the most luminous active galaxies. Conventionally, astronomers thought that the accumulated glow of active galactic nuclei -- black hole-powered jets emanating from active galaxies -- accounted for most of this gamma-ray background.
"Thanks to Fermi, we now know for certain that this is not the case,
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Last week, the brightest gamma-ray burst ever was observed.
GLAST has a sky map, first results, pretty pictures and movies, and a new name.
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope
"If you've seen one gamma-ray burst, you've seen one gamma-ray burst!" -Common quote among gamma-ray burst astronomers, emphasizing how little we know about them.
The Dot Physics game inspired us to put up this photo from the Institute's new calendar,* which features images of (mostly) old scientific equipment.
This is comforting news. I always suspected it was weird out there. Now I know.
I believe you mean "Mysterious gamma ray source is mysterious" ^.^