| arya | Date: Saturday, 23-November-2013, 8:42 PM | Message # 1 |
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| The biggest and brightest cosmic explosion ever witnessed was captured by orbiting telescopes last spring, astronomers have said.
Branded ‘the monster’ by scientists, lucky for us on Earth, the huge gamma ray explosion happened in a far off galaxy 3.7 billion light-years away.
"This burst was a once-in-a-century cosmic event," Nasa astrophysics chief Paul Hertz said at a news conference Thursday.
A gamma ray burst happens when a massive star dies, collapses into a black hole, explodes in what's called a supernova and ejects energetic radiation. A planet caught in one of these bursts would lose its atmosphere instantly and be left a burnt cinder, scientists say.
Although orbiting Nasa telescopes have been capturing bursts every couple of days for more than 20 years, this one smashed records, four studies published Thursday in the journal Science said.
Read more/Full article/source - http://www.independent.co.uk/news....95.html
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