burst

No, really, I can hang with the big boys! Although this is usually something we hear from people who are seemingly out of their league, due to diminutive stature, here on Earth: (Muggsy Bogues is awesome.) Apparently, there are stars out there that have the same Napoleon Complex. According to this Press Release, a star only 1% as bright as the Sun just released a burst of energy as powerful as 1000 solar flares! Now, that link is only too happy to provide you with an artist's rendition of what happened: But let's compare this with real stuff, instead. Our Sun has a magnetic field that's…

Last week, the brightest gamma-ray burst ever was observed. (See here.) I wanted to know what it was that caused this bright explosion that, despite it being at redshift z=0.94 (or about 7.5 billion light years away), it was visible on Earth with the naked eye! Well, a scientific paper was written on the observations of this burst, named GRB 080319B, or the second GRB observed on 03/19/08. Let me take you through the highlights. First off, here's what it looked like, in gamma-rays (left) and the afterglow in the optical/UV (right): When we look from Earth, the faintest objects we can see…

Those of you who keep up with your news may have seen this headline on CNN last week: Star Explodes Halfway Across Universe. What they're talking about is a Gamma-Ray Burst, which was so bright that, despite being 7.5 billion light years (that's 2.3 Gpc) away, it was still visible on Earth with the naked eye. From the article: The aging star, in a previously unknown galaxy, exploded in a gamma ray burst 7.5 billion light years away, its light finally reaching Earth early Wednesday. This is the sort of thing that the SWIFT satellite was designed to detect, pinpoint, and then tell Earth-based…