All reports
January 2017 - Earth Number Two?
Report #23 - December 2016
A Bright Christmas
The universe never sleeps, not even while Santa is hard at work delivering presents. In honor of the holidays, you may decide to decorate your home with lights, or light up the fireplace, but, on December 25, 2010, the universe had something else in mind for the holidays. That is, instead of the weather outside being snowy and "frightful" in space, like on Earth, it was...bright. Very bright. So bright that, with the help of the right equipment, you would have been able to see the brightness from 7 billion light-years away! 7 billion light-years away lied the source of that light: GRB 101225A, or the "Christmas Burst." in the constellation Andromeda.
The Christmas Burst
On December 25, 2010, NASA's Swift spacecraft picked up on an "unusually long-lasting" gamma-ray burst in the constellation Andromeda. This particular burst, known as "GRB 101225A," or the "Christmas Burst," produced high-emissions for at least two hours, an anamoly for gamma-ray bursts.
Blue Supergiant Stars
Scientists believe the Christmas Burst's cause was from the collaspe of a blue supergiant star "hundreds of times larger than the sun." According to NASA, these kinds of stars "hold about 20 times the sun's mass and may reach sizes 1,000 times larger than the sun," so you can only imagine how powerful the explosions are when these stars collaspe. Powerful indeed, for, when blue supergiant stars collaspe, their collaspe alone create "powerful jets" that shoot matter in opposite directions at the near speed of light. The reaction between this "flying" matter and other matter in and around the dying supergiant causes the jets to "produce a spike of gamma rays."
An artist's impression of a blue supergiant star.
What's So Special About Gamma Rays?
Gamma rays are the most powerful, or "energetic," form of electromagnetic radiation, or light. They create what are called, "Gamma-ray bursts," which create, as what NASA would call it, "the most luminous and mysterious explosions in the universe." Gamma-ray bursts are so powerful that they could easily fry a planet the size of Earth in a matter of seconds! The secret weapon to these bursts that makes them so supreme are the "surges of gamma rays and X-rays" that they emit. Such surges can be seen and observed "at optical and radio energies."
An artist's impression of the emission of gamma rays (pink) from the supergiant star.
SOURCES:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=12077
https://www.nde-ed.org/EducationResources/CommunityCollege/Radiography/Physics/gamma.htm