Most powerful gamma ray burst ever seen

So the most powerful gamma ray burst ever recorded was seen recently. Fortunately it came from about 2 billion light years away.

NASA’s Swift, Fermi Missions Detect Exceptional Cosmic Blast

Quote:

The signal, originating from the direction of the constellation Sagitta, had traveled an estimated 1.9 billion years to reach Earth. Astronomers think it represents the birth cry of a new black hole, one that formed in the heart of a massive star collapsing under its own weight. In these circumstances, a nascent black hole drives powerful jets of particles traveling near the speed of light. The jets pierce through the star, emitting X-rays and gamma rays as they stream into space. The burst also provided a long-awaited inaugural observing opportunity for a link between two experiments on the International Space Station – NASA’s NICER X-ray telescope and a Japanese detector called the Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI). Activated in April, the connection is dubbed the Orbiting High-energy Monitor Alert Network (OHMAN). It allows NICER to rapidly turn to outbursts detected by MAXI, actions that previously required intervention by scientists on the ground.

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The good news is that our atmosphere actually provides a lot of protection from this kind of radiation. Cannot say the same for people on the moon or Mars perhaps. I wonder how the people on the ISS fared?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRB_221009A

via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/N8l0XMx