On Sunday, October 9th, 2022 astronomers worldwide were woken up to their gamma-ray readers in the upper atmosphere going crazy. This was due to the largest recorded GRB explosion in history. A GRB explosion is when a star collapses and releases gamma and x-rays across the universe. This particular GRB event was labeled as GRB 221009A and it was the largest and brightest one to date. It was so bright in fact that it blinded some of the gamma-ray sensors in space. The light could be detected for almost 10 hours after the initial wave of light had hit the sensors. GRB 221009A happened around 2 billion light years away which is on the closer end for GRB. It is located in the direction of the Sagitta constellation. What some scientists are speculating about this star collapse is that since it was so powerful and gave off so much energy it might have been the beginning of the formation of a black hole. This is very interesting because this is some of the first information we can obtain about the formation of black holes. Some of the new information we can observe from this is how the matter interacts around this newly developing black hole and what happens to the remaining light around it. GRB is very special it gives us new insights into GRBs because of how powerful this one was and it can also give us information on newly developed black holes. Scientists believe that a GRB like this one only happens every few decades so it may be a while before we see anything like this again.
Work Cited
Japelj, Jure. “Brightest Gamma-Ray Burst Yet Lit up the Sky.” Sky & Telescope, Sky Publishing, 17 Oct. 2022, https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/brightest-gamma-ray-burst-yet-lit-up-the-sky/.
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. "NASA's Swift, Fermi missions detect exceptional cosmic blast." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 14 October 2022. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/10/221014200238.htm>.
You mentioned that the GRB may have been from the formation of a black hole. My understanding was that all GRBs were resultants of black holes forming from the collision of two neutron stars or a neutron star colliding with a black hole. My question is what else could have caused such a massive GRB except the formation of a black hole?
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