There has never been a more powerful electromagnetic «explosion» in the history of civilization
The most powerful gamma-ray burst in the history of our civilization seems to have been recorded by scientists in the constellation Arrow. GRB 221009A turned out to be 70 times brighter than any other observed gamma ray burst. Moreover, Russian scientists from the State Astronomical Institute. Sternberg, Moscow State University were the first to accurately determine the place from which he was heading to Earth, having traveled billions of light years. One of the co-authors of the discovery, Professor of Moscow State University, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Vladimir Lipunov (his name is under the article in Science, which was published on June 7) told how the researchers succeeded.
So, a very powerful flash — over 100 million electron volts — lit up our sector of the Universe on October 9, 2022. It was fixed by the Swift spacecraft («Swift») — joint telescope of the USA, Italy and Great Britain. The radiation lasted more than five minutes, which indicated a «long» gamma-ray burst, which are usually born as a result of the collapse of a star and its transformation into a black hole. However, it soon became clear that the «Swift» gave incorrect coordinates: Russian robotic telescopes of the MASTER global network turned out to be more accurate.
— GRBs are usually seen first by either the Swift or us, — says Vladimir Lipunov. — If for some reason we hover late, then we get a rather weakened surge, fading away. And this one was quite strong, kept the brightness at a very high level, uncharacteristic for all known gamma-ray bursts. The contribution of MSU scientists is that the robotic telescopes of the global network MASTER MSU, located in South Africa and Argentina, were the first to report an unusual behavior of the optical afterglow, which even after three hours retained its brightness. We sent a telegram about the discovery to the NASA portal, which brings together such telegrams about discoveries from around the world. And it turned out that… were the first. The fact is that Swift first attributed the detected surge to another source, and they had some confusion. The MASTER global network thus turned out to be the first in the list — https://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/other/221009A.gcn3 — sent telegrams from different scientific groups. There was another Russian device — The Konus gamma spectrometer installed on the American spacecraft, which also confirmed the discovery.
Gamma-ray bursts — these are the most powerful electromagnetic explosions in our universe. They were discovered by accident, and, oddly enough, the arms race helped: the satellites were looking for gamma radiation on Earth, which could indicate the creation of a potential adversary of nuclear weapons, but instead they once found a signal «sent» from the opposite side of the universe. It is now known that such radiation is emitted either by the merger of two neutron stars (then short gamma-ray bursts are obtained, lasting up to 1–2 seconds), or a dying star, which turns into a supernova (long gamma-ray bursts, up to several minutes).
— Among similar long gamma-ray bursts GRB (Gamma ray burst. — Auth.), the burst GRB 221009A is the brightest flash ever observed, — explains Lipunov. — Due to its enormous energy, the 221009A burst is an exceptionally rare event: it «bypassed» all previous GBRs that scientists have recorded over 55 years of observation. In a few tens of seconds «before our eyes» five solar masses turned into photons. But at the same time, the October gamma-ray burst also became one of the closest to us of all previously observed gamma-ray bursts, to which scientists were able to determine the distance. And such events can only occur once in 1000 years!
Western researchers went further: they announced that such a surge as GRB 221009A has not been since the birth of life on Earth — it turned out to be about 70 times brighter than the most powerful gamma-ray bursts.
Inspired by such a bright event, scientists around the world began to actively look for the very supernova that could give rise to it and «direct» it; strong signal towards the Earth. However, it has not yet been found. It is only known that the burst reached our Galaxy «only» for a couple of billion years. Its light has already helped astrophysicists detect and analyze the properties of 20 nebulae in our Milky Way, as well as discover the cosmic particle — a photon with an anomalously high energy of 250 teraelectronvolts (TeV); it arrived 22 minutes after the gamma-ray flash GRB 221009A.
The Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences asked the question: could a particle reach us, having overcome 2 billion light years, without losing energy? Many theorists then talked about the fact that the event could «indicate» us to the "new physics" — outside the Standard Model.