On October 9th last year, scientists witnessed an anomaly in the sky.
A large amount of deep space X-rays emanated from the darkness between the stars and began to flood the observatory. These signals appear to be related to extremely bright events occurring in our galaxy known as gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). This is an eruption of high-energy particles associated with things like exploding stars and the birth of black holes. But as one expert said, this His GRB, for example, is to a standard His GRB what a floodlight is to a light bulb.
This event was dramatic enough at first glance.it was guessed It will be the brightest GRB since the beginning of human civilization, exhibiting photons that hold more energy than the Large Hadron Collider can produce. In fact, it was even given a cheeky name to complement its official title, GRB 221009A: BOAT (short for “Brightest Ever”). But then scientists noticed something even more surprising about the boat. Actually, it was not born from the Milky Way. No, BOAT is from the galaxy behind us. In other words, the brightness of BOAT cannot be overstated.
And now, on Tuesday (November 14), researchers have published a paper that begins to answer one of the questions that’s probably running through your head: What does this ultra-bright GRB mean for us? What does it mean?
A seven-minute burst (still detectable for the next 10 hours) appears to have caused a major “change” in Earth’s atmosphere, according to a new study. The most interesting thing is that those changes appeared to be found in the upper ionosphere of our planet, the barrier between us and the universe. If true, this would be the first time GRBs have been seen impacting this region, the researchers said. “We’ve been measuring gamma-ray bursts since the 1960s, and this is the most powerful one ever measured,” said Pietro U of the National Institute of Astrophysics in Rome, co-author of the new study. Bertini said: stated in a statement.
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Why are these results important? Life on our planet depends on the stability of Earth’s atmosphere. “There has been great debate about the possible effects of gamma-ray bursts in our galaxy,” study lead author Mirco Piersanti of Italy’s University of L’Aquila said in a statement.
What does “variation” mean?
Earth’s atmosphere has several layers, with the ionosphere at the top, extending from about 31 miles (50 km) to 590 miles (950 km) in altitude. Locations above 217 miles (350 km) are considered to be in the upper half. And importantly, there are charged particles, or ions, throughout the ionosphere. The new authors witnessed the failure in the upper half at an altitude of about 310 miles (500 km).
These disturbances/changes/perturbations that the researchers in the new study are talking about essentially refer to changes in the electric field in the upper atmosphere. This means that all charged particles in the ionosphere are directly affected. Such ionospheric disturbances are typically associated with high-energy particle events originating from our Sun, but scientists believe BOAT’s interference could be caused by a star nearly 2 billion light-years away. We believe that this is the result of an explosion.
That’s part of why everyone is so surprised by the fact that it affected the outer shell of our planet.
“We can see that what is happening in deep space is also having an impact on Earth,” European Space Agency (ESA) project scientist Eric Courkers said in a statement. Statistically speaking, a GRB this bright would only reach Earth about once every 10,000 years, ESA officials said.
And once it gets here, this GRB sets off lightning detectors in India, alerts instruments in Germany, spreads evidence of its photon flux over parts of Asia and Australia, and even sends out an afterglow. I released it.
For the new study, researchers analyzed BOAT using data from the China Seismic and Electromagnetic Satellite Surveyor (CSES) in low Earth orbit. CSES is typically used to study how earthquakes change in the ionosphere. This is how they found the results they published today, but used other tools such as ESA’s Integral satellite to model their final conclusions. “We have looked for this effect in other GRBs in the past and found nothing,” Ubertini said.
“To our knowledge, this GRB is one of the largest ever detected,” the authors write in the new paper.
And, obviously, BOAT also affected some of the lower layers of the ionosphere.
“Remarkably, this disturbance affected the lowest layers of Earth’s ionosphere, located just tens of kilometers above the Earth’s surface, leaving a footprint comparable to a large solar flare,” ESA said. said Laura Hayes, a solar physicist and co-author of the paper. 2022 survey The statement stated the impact on the lower ionosphere.
okay, we’re okay
ESA says, “Analysis of the effects of explosions could provide information about mass extinctions in Earth’s history,” but the research team’s paper suggests that eruptions like BOAT could lead to the extinction of humanity. It doesn’t completely imply anything. Rather, this eruption could give us insight into what would happen if a nearby, actually threatening GRB were to impact Earth.
For example, the researchers write in a new paper, “They can rapidly increase atmospheric ionization, which could deplete stratospheric ozone on a global scale.”
The ozone layer can be thought of as Earth’s sunscreen, protecting Earth’s inhabitants from harmful ultraviolet radiation emitted by the sun. When our bodies absorb too much of these rays, it can lead to things like cancer and increased risk of cataracts. When plants are exposed to too much UV light, many of them will die.
But our ozone seems to be relatively okay (even the ozone hole is recovering), so there’s no need to panic just yet. But scientists are interested in what his future GRB will bring us. This study is exactly what the new research team has in mind.
Meanwhile, other astronomers continue to investigate the cause of the boats. It’s a little confusing. For example, the James Webb Space Telescope team and the Hubble Space Telescope team attempted to solve this problem. search was emptyBoth were unable to pinpoint the aftermath of a star’s explosion in the boat’s region of space.
There is also much to study about the original BOAT X-ray signal. That’s because wavelengths have to travel across vast expanses of space, passing through dust clouds and other phenomena in space, picking up valuable information along the way. — ready for human deciphering.
The research is published The study was published in the journal Nature Communications on November 14th.