GRB 080916C is a

gamma-ray burst In gamma-ray astronomy, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are extremely energetic events occurring in distant Galaxy, galaxies which represent the brightest and most powerful class of explosion in the universe. These extreme Electromagnetic radiation, ele ...

(GRB) that was recorded on September 16, 2008, in the Carina constellation and detected by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The burst lasted for 23 minutes (1400 s). It is one of the most extreme gamma-ray bursts ever recorded, and was the most energetic gamma-ray burst ever recorded, until GRB 221009A was recorded in 2022. The explosion had the energy of approximately 9000

type Ia supernova A Type Ia supernova (read: "type one-A") is a type of supernova that occurs in binary systems (two stars orbiting one another) in which one of the stars is a white dwarf. The other star can be anything from a giant star to an even smaller white ...

e if the emission was isotropically emitted, and the gas jets emitting the initial gamma rays moved at a minimum velocity of approximately 299,792,158 m/s (99.9999% the

speed of light The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted , is a universal physical constant exactly equal to ). It is exact because, by international agreement, a metre is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time i ...

), making this blast one of the most extreme recorded.Most Extreme Gamma-ray Blast Ever, Seen By Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope

Science Daily ''ScienceDaily'' is an American website launched in 1995 that aggregates press releases and publishes lightly edited press releases (a practice called churnalism) about science, similar to Phys.org and EurekAlert!. History The site was f ...

, February 19, 2009Huge gamma-ray blast spotted 12.2 bln light-years from earth
AFP, February 19, 2009 The 16.5-second delay for the highest-energy gamma ray observed in this burst is consistent with some theories of

quantum gravity Quantum gravity (QG) is a field of theoretical physics that seeks to describe gravity according to the principles of quantum mechanics. It deals with environments in which neither gravitational nor quantum effects can be ignored, such as in the v ...

, which state that all forms of light may not travel through space at the same speed. Very-high-energy gamma rays may be slowed down as they propagate through the quantum turbulence of

space-time In physics, spacetime, also called the space-time continuum, is a mathematical model that fuses the three-dimensional space, three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional continuum (measurement), continu ...

.Most Powerful Gamma-Ray Burst May Point to New Physics
, Sky and Telescope, February 19, 2009New telescope finds strange behavior in gamma-ray bursts, and also documents the most energetic burst known
, Science News, February 20, 2009 The explosion took place 12.2 billion

light-year A light-year, alternatively spelled light year (ly or lyr), is a unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equal to exactly , which is approximately 9.46 trillion km or 5.88 trillion mi. As defined by the International Astr ...

s ( light travel distance) away. That means it occurred 12.2 billion years ago—when the universe was only about 1.5 billion years old. The burst lasted for 23 minutes, almost 700 times as long as the two-second average for high energy GRBs. Follow-up observations were made 32 hours after the blast using the Gamma-Ray Burst Optical/Near-Infrared Detector (GROND) on the 2.2 metre telescope at the European Southern Observatory in La Silla,

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

, allowing astronomers to pinpoint the blast's distance to 12.2 billion light years.Fermi’s record breaking gamma-ray burst
, Astronomy Now, February 20, 2009 The object's redshift is z = 4.35. If all that energy from GRB 080916C could be captured and converted into usable electricity at 100% efficiency, it would produce enough electricity to supply the entire planet Earth with 13.5 octillion years of power (according to electricity consumption of 2008).

References

External links

Telescope spies cataclysmic blast

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

, February 20, 2009
NASA's Fermi Telescope Sees Most Extreme Gamma-ray Blast Yet

, February 19, 2009
Record Cosmic Explosion Brightens Student's First Day
Newswise, February 19, 2009 {{DEFAULTSORT:GRB 080916C 080916C 20080916 September 2008 Carina (constellation)

See also

References

External links