Gamma-ray bursts are incredibly powerful energy jets that occur in space and can last a few thousandths of a second up to a few seconds at most. A recent event however has spawned a beam lasting almost 17 minutesshocking astronomers.
Although not very common, these explosions have already been observed in the past and are called “ultra-long gamma-ray bursts”. This particular event though, had something even more unusual.
The total duration of the observed flash was 1095 seconds, but curiously the event was interrupted for about 600 seconds; the lightning then appeared for a few minutes, disappearing for 10 minutes and finally reappearing. This strange sequence caused the automatic satellite system – responsible for detecting gamma ray bursts – to fire twice. The observations seem to confirm that both events had the same origin.
The phenomenon also set a new record, as its light traveled 11.6 billion years before reaching us, making it the farthest ultra-long range flash never registered. The researchers then continued to investigate the remaining light trail to determine its origin.
The new observations have brought some chaos to the discipline, since a previous similar event seemed to have been caused by the collision of two neutron stars, while in this case the culprit could be the explosion of a supernova. But the bigger mystery remains the brief interruption between the two flashes; scientists have proposed several explanations (such as the collapse of a neutron star into a black hole), but for the moment the question remains open.
In short, these are undoubtedly phenomena on which there is still much to discover.