He has now been able to prove for the first time, some of the key phenomena that play a major role in
producing gamma ray bursts.
Neutron star mergers like
this produce gamma ray bursts — beams of radiation that can destroy planets or make them inhospitable to life.
Not exact matches
Dr Sarri explains: «We thought that the best way to work out how
gamma ray bursts are
produced would be to mimic them in small - scale reproductions in the laboratory — reproducing a little source of these beams and look at how they evolve when left on their own.
Some astrophysicists believe that dark matter particles may occasionally annihilate each other,
producing bursts of high - energy
gamma rays.
«Our theories predicted that neutron star binaries, which would inevitably merge as they emit gravitational waves, would
produce a short and distinctive
burst of
gamma rays at the moment of their merger,» Mészáros said.
But the
gamma -
ray signals
produced by the August collision were 10,000 times less bright than those seen in other detected short
gamma -
ray bursts.
A fortuitous intervention by a star may have given scientists their first proof that
gamma ray bursts produce fiery rings expanding into the universe.
«Many astronomers, including our group, have already provided a great deal of evidence that long - duration
gamma -
ray bursts (those lasting more than two seconds) are
produced by the collapse of extremely massive stars.
The definitive evidence came from Hubble observations in near - infrared light of the fading fireball
produced in the aftermath of a short
gamma -
ray burst (GRB).
In the image at left, the galaxy in the center
produced the
gamma -
ray burst, designated GRB 130603B.
«It could be created by a superluminous supernova or a long
gamma ray burst, and then later on, as it evolves and its rotation slows down a bit, it
produces these fast radio
bursts as well as continuous radio emission powered by that spindown.
«High - energy neutrinos are
produced along with
gamma rays by extremely high - energy radiation known as cosmic
rays in objects like star - forming galaxies, galaxy clusters, supermassive black holes, or
gamma -
ray bursts.
The observations supported a 25 - year - old conjecture that neutron star mergers
produce short
gamma -
ray bursts, and confirmed that gravitational waves travel at the same speed of light, ruling out some speculative alternatives to Einstein's theory of gravity and general relativity.
Dark lightning is a
burst of
gamma rays produced during thunderstorms by extremely fast moving electrons colliding with air molecules.
This would make a weak black hole flare up,
producing a
burst of
gamma rays that in turn spits out cosmic
rays, suggests Farrar (arxiv.org/abs/1207.3186v1).
Ray Jayawardhana: It is a clue that most likely, these high energy neutrinos come either from jets of particles that are accelerated by super massive black holes at the hearts of galaxies, or from really gigantic stars that explode at the end of their lives that also
produce a phenomenon we call
gamma ray bursts, which also might accelerate particles to very high speeds and energies.
Eventually they collide and
produce the short
gamma -
ray burst.
Dr Pannarale added: «A possible scenario that could
produce gamma -
ray bursts involves a neutron star, the most compact star in the Universe, being ripped apart by a black hole while orbiting it.
«We know that when a
gamma -
ray burst explodes, it
produces a blast of material called a fireball, which expands at relativistic speeds like a rapidly inflating bubble,» Piro explains.
In the days and weeks following the September LIGO announcement, a handful of papers appeared on the open - access science paper website arXiv.org, throwing out possible physical scenarios in which two midsize colliding black holes could
produce a
gamma -
ray burst.
Future missions such as the Joint Astrophysics Nascent Universe Satellite — a small explorer mission being considered by NASA — could give astronomers their first look at
gamma -
ray bursts produced by these first - generation stellar objects.
«Amazingly, even though the sky is known to be full of transient objects emitting at X - and
gamma -
ray wavelengths,» NRL astronomer Dr. Joseph Lazio pointed out, «very little has been done to look for radio
bursts, which are often easier for astronomical objects to
produce.»
Such a rare event is expected to
produce both gravitational waves and a short
gamma -
ray burst, both of which were observed on 17 August 2017 by LIGO — Virgo.
Here's the deal with
gamma -
ray bursts: When a huge star collapses, it
produces a boatload of radiation in concentrated streams.
New observations confirm that colliding neutron stars
produce short
gamma -
ray bursts.