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Journalism of Courage
Northwestern University on Friday confirmed that the brightest gamma-ray burst ever recorded, GRB 221009A, was caused by the collapse and explosion of a massive star. But the study also found no evidence of heavy elements like gold and platinum, meaning that we still don’t know where and how they are formed.
Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful and violent explosions we know in the universe. These explosions can send out light with up to a quintillion times (that is 10 followed by 18 zeroes) the brightness of the Sun. GRBs were discovered by accident, but current scientific consensus suggests they signal the birth of black holes.
GRB 221009A was recorded in October 2022 and is also called B.O.A.T or the “brightest of all time,” because it is. Researchers from Northwestern University and other institutions used the James Webb Space Telescope to confirm that it was caused by the collapse and explosion of a massive star. But having solved one mystery, it seems like they have thrown open another one.
Scientists have often speculated that evidence of heavy metals like platinum and gold might be found in newly-discovered supernova. But the extensive new study using the James Webb Space Telescope did not find any such signatures. The origin and the formation of heavy elements in the universe is one of the biggest open mysteries in astronomy.
“When we confirmed that the GRB was generated by the collapse of a massive star, that gave us the opportunity to test a hypothesis for how some of the heaviest elements in the universe are formed. We did not see signatures of these heavy elements, suggesting that extremely energetic GRBs like the B.O.A.T. do not produce these elements. That doesn’t mean that all GRBs do not produce them, but it’s a key piece of information as we continue to understand where these heavy elements come from. Future observations with JWST will determine if the B.O.A.T.’s ‘normal’ cousins produce these elements,” said Northwestern’s Peter Blanchard, who led the study, in a press statement.
B.O.A.T was so bright that when it went through the Earth on October 9, 2022, it was bright enough to saturate most of the gamma-ray detectors on the planet. The actual explosion happened about 2 billion light-years away from our planet in the direction of the constellation Sagitta and it lasted for just a few hundred seconds.
