NASA was able to detect what is considered to be the brightest explosion in space following the collapse of a star into a massive black hole.

The space agency's Swift and Fermi missions detected an exceptional cosmic blast that featured long-lasting pulses of high-energy radiation. The event swept over the Earth on Sunday, October 9, and came from what is known as a gamma-ray burst (GRB), which is the most powerful class of explosions in the universe and is one of the most luminous events that mankind knows.

Massive Cosmic Explosion

At the time of the event, a wave of X-rays and gamma rays passed through our solar system, which triggered detectors aboard NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, Neils Gehrels Swift Observatory, and Wind spacecraft as well as others.

Telescopes around the world also turned to the site to study the aftermath of the explosion and new observations continue to monitor the situation. The explosion, known as GRB 221009A, provided an unexpectedly exciting start to the 10th Fermi Symposium, a gathering of gamma-ray astronomers in Johannesburg, South Africa, as per NASA.

A Fermi deputy project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, Judy Racusin, who is attending the conference, said that the meeting kicked off with a "bang."

The signal of the explosion came from the direction of the constellation Sagitta and had traveled an estimated 1.9 billion years to reach our planet. Astronomers theorize that it represents the birth cry of a new black hole that formed in the heart of a massive star that collapsed under its own weight.

According to the Indian Express, when the event occurs, the budding black hole attracts powerful streams of particles that are traveling at nearly the speed of light. When these jets successfully pierce through the star, it emits X-rays and gamma rays in all directions.

NASA's NICER X-ray telescope and a Japanese detector called Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI), in April this year were linked to create OHMAN (Orbiting High-energy Monitor Alert Network).

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Birth of a Black Hole

The explosion also provided an amazing inaugural opportunity for the two linked experiments to observe. With the link, NICER automatically and rapidly turns to explosions detected by MAXI, a capability that previously needed interventions by scientists on the ground.

NICER science lead at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Zaven Arzoumanian, said in an agency press statement that OHMAN provided an automated alert for NICER to follow up within three hours. This means that future opportunities could result in a response time of only a few minutes.

The light from GRB 221009A provides new insights into stellar collapse, black hole birth, the behavior and interaction of matter near the speed of light, the conditions in a distant galaxy, and many others. Astronomers believe that they may not detect another GRB such as this one for the next decades.

Astronomers added that the exceptional brightness of the cosmic explosion is due to its relative closeness to Earth compared to other GRBs. a Fermi LAT Collaboration member, Roberta Pillera, said that the burst is much closer than typical GRBs and provides many details for experts to study, SciTechDaily reported.

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