A cosmic explosion known as GRB 250702B is by far the longest gamma-ray burst astronomers have ever seen—if it’s even one at all
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/long-lived-gamma-ray-burst-is-unlike-any-seen-before/
A cosmic explosion known as GRB 250702B is by far the longest gamma-ray burst astronomers have ever seen—if it’s even one at all
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/long-lived-gamma-ray-burst-is-unlike-any-seen-before/
3 Comments
Astronomer here! I wrote this article! 🙂
GRB 250702B has been without a doubt one of the most fascinating discoveries of the year, and a huge focus of the astronomy community, yet you haven’t heard much about it. This is for a few reasons, one unfortunate one being there is a press release from NASA that’s now been delayed like a month due to the shutdown, so most astronomers actively working on the first data from it can’t publicly talk publicly due to the embargo on it.
Lucky for you all, your humble astronomer-correspondent knows enough people willing to talk off the record, and her own collaboration who’s been working on radio observations has no such embargo. 🙂 Enjoy the article, and give a shout if there’s questions!
Perhaps a silly question but in the article it says these are not rare in a shorter duration and from what I gather this being a more densely occupied portion of space, Is there a way to determine if this is multiple discrete events that just happen to line up? Like do discrete events have a signature that differs enough for us to use as a sort of fingerprint? Can someone ELI5 it for me?
For those of us that are interested and fascinated a few questions:
1. What normally causes these outbursts?
2. Besides length of time, are there any other unusual characteristics of this outburst (e.g. spectrum of energy emitted)?
3. What are some of the current proposed explanations?
4. Is it possible that this outburst is an artifact of a non-local set of causes that enhance the observed length without requiring a new explanation? (Like say gravitational lensing showing multiple objects that are in fact only an image of a single object?)