"It blows away every gamma ray burst we've seen so far."

NASA Satellite Detects Naked-Eye Explosion Halfway Across Universe


A powerful stellar explosion detected March 19 by NASA's Swift satellite has shattered the record for the most distant object that could be seen with the naked eye.


The explosion was a gamma ray burst. Most gamma ray bursts occur when
massive stars run out of nuclear fuel. Their cores collapse to form black
holes or neutron stars, releasing an intense burst of high-energy gamma
rays and ejecting particle jets that rip through space at nearly the speed
of light like turbocharged cosmic blowtorches. When the jets plow into
surrounding interstellar clouds, they heat the gas, often generating bright
afterglows. Gamma ray bursts are the most luminous explosions in the
universe since the big bang.


"This burst was a whopper," said Swift principal investigator Neil
Gehrels of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "It blows
away every gamma ray burst we've seen so far."

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