Scientists discover first of its kind energy peak -- or 'jet' -- from gamma ray burst

Washington DC (UPI) Jul 25, 2024 - Scientists have announced a never-before-seen energy peak that resulted from the largest gamma ray burst in history, NASA announced Thursday.

The brightest-of-all-time gamma ray burst, which was quickly dubbed the BOAT, was discovered by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in October 2022 and was heralded and heavily studied by scientists. Its data, scientists say, shows the evidence of the energy peak, or "jet."

Scientists published a paper about the discovery of the energy peak in the July 26 edition of the journal Science.

"A few minutes after the BOAT erupted, Fermi's Gamma-ray Burst Monitor recorded an unusual energy peak that caught our attention," said lead researcher Maria Edvige Ravasio at Radboud University in the Netherlands.

"When I first saw that signal, it gave me goosebumps. Our analysis since then shows it to be the first high-confidence emission line ever seen in 50 years of studying GRBs."

GRB's, the most powerful explosions in the cosmos, emit enormous amounts of gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light. The most common type occurs when the core of a massive star uses up its fuel, collapses, and forms a spinning black hole.

Matter falling into the black hole powers huge jets that blast through the star's outer layers at nearly the speed of light.

The jets from the GRB are what are of so much interest to scientists now.

"The putative emission line appears almost five minutes after the burst was detected and well after it had dimmed enough to end saturation effects for Fermi," a statement from NASA said, describing why jets are so important.

Previous studies have shown similar emissions, scientists said, but they were all determined to be statistical fluctuations in the data.

"After decades of studying these incredible cosmic explosions, we still don't understand the details of how these jets work," Elizabeth Hays, the Fermi project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in the NASA release.

"Finding clues like this remarkable emission line will help scientists investigate this extreme environment more deeply."

The team of NASA scientists said the most likely source of the jet is the "annihilation of electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons," creating a dramatic ejection of energy that are often directed toward Earth.