The Day a Half-Million Years of Starlight Zapped Earth

[Ichingcarpenter]

The Day a Half-Million Years of Starlight Zapped Earth

It came suddenly from the distant reaches of the Constellation Sagittarius, some 50,000 light years away. For a brief instant, a couple of tenths of a second, on December 27, 2004 an invisible burst of energy the equivalent of half a million years of sunlight shone on Earth. Many orbiting satellites electronics were zapped and the Earth's upper atmosphere was amazingly ionized from a massive hit of gamma ray energy.

Data from satellites and observatories around the globe showed a jet from a powerful stellar explosion witnessed on March 19, 2008 aimed almost directly at Earth. NASA's Swift satellite detected the explosion - formally named GRB 080319B - at 2:13 a.m. EDT that morning and pinpointed its position in the constellation Bootes. The gamma-ray burst became bright enough for human eyes to see. Observations of the event are giving astronomers the most detailed portrait of a burst ever recorded.

"Swift was designed to find unusual bursts," said Swift principal investigator Neil Gehrels at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "We really hit the jackpot with this one."

In a paper that appeared in Nature, Judith Racusin of Penn State University and a team of 92 coauthors reported on observations across the spectrum that began 30 minutes before the explosion and followed its afterglow for months. The team concludes the burst's extraordinary brightness arose from a jet that shot material directly toward Earth at 99.99995 percent the speed of light.



SNIP...........

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/.a/6a00d8341bf7f753ef014e860e7b07970d-pi

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/02/the-day-a-half-a-million-years-of-starlight-zapped-the-earth.html

[MBS]

1. really interesting

The Science Forum is one of the best things about DU. Thanks to everyone who digs up all this good stuff!

[DiverDave]

2. One of my nightmare's

gamma rays can unzip DNA and kill every living thing on the planet.

Saw a program about extinction events and gamma ray burst was one way

[TheMadMonk]

5. We got oceans.

[Possumpoint]

3. Basis

for the movie "Knowing".

[qazplm]

4. actually that would have made sense

unfortunately, in Knowing they said it was from the sun, which is pretty ridiculous.