{"id":51760,"date":"2023-11-14T16:28:16","date_gmt":"2023-11-14T16:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/78e46b73-82f0-4050-889c-140da0c38161"},"modified":"2023-11-14T17:32:32","modified_gmt":"2023-11-14T17:32:32","slug":"earth-hit-by-gamma-rays-from-exploding-star-2-billion-lightyears-away","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/rss_feed\/earth-hit-by-gamma-rays-from-exploding-star-2-billion-lightyears-away\/","title":{"rendered":"Earth hit by gamma rays from exploding star 2 billion lightyears away"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>

By Iain Todd\n <\/p>

Published: Tuesday, 14 November 2023 at 16:28 PM<\/p>

\n\n

Earth has been hit by a huge burst of gamma rays originating from a star nearly 2 billion lightyears away, according to the European Space Agency.<\/p>

The gamma ray burst<\/a> caused a disturbance in Earth’s ionosphere and was detected by mutliple high-energy satellites in Earth orbit, including the European Integral mission<\/a>.<\/p>

The detections occurred at 14:21 BST \/ 15:21 CEST on 9 October 2022.<\/p>

Disturbances like this can be caused by high energy activity from the Sun, but this time the source was an exploding star.<\/p>

Astronomers say analysing the effects of the gamma ray blast could reveal information about mass extinction events throughout Earth’s history.<\/p>

Gamma-ray burst 221009A hit Earth’s atmosphere. Image captured by the XMM-Newton mission. Credit: ESA\/XMM-Newton\/M. Rigoselli (INAF)<\/figcaption><\/figure>
**Strongest gamma-ray burst ever measured<\/strong><\/h2>**Gamma-ray bursts are thought to be caused by exploding stars – supernovae<\/a> – or the collision of neutron stars<\/a>.<\/p>
The International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (Integral) was launched in 2002 with the aim of detecting gamma-ray bursts.<\/p>
The burst that hit Earth is known as GRB 221009A.<\/p>
\u201cIt was probably the brightest gamma-ray burst we have ever detected,\u201d says Mirko Piersanti, University of L\u2019Aquila, Italy, and lead author of the team behind the study.<\/p>
\u201cWe\u2019ve been measuring gamma-ray bursts since the 1960s, and this is the strongest ever measured,\u201d says co-author Pietro Ubertini, National Institute for Astrophysics, Rome, Italy, and the principal investigator for Intergral\u2019s IBIS instrument.<\/p>
$\"Artist's$
Artist’s impression of Integral, ESA’s International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory. Credit: ESA\/D. Ducros<\/figcaption><\/figure>
What happened?<\/strong><\/h2>
Statistically, a gamma-ray burst as strong as GRB 221009A hits Earth only once every 10,000 years.\u00a0<\/p>
The gamma rays impacted Earth over a period of 800 seconds, delivering enough energy to be detected by lighting detectors in India.<\/p>
Meanwhile in Germany, instruments recorded that Earth’s ionosphere was affected for several hours.<\/p>
The ionosphere is a layer of Earth\u2019s upper atmosphere stretching from about 50-950km in altitude that contains electrically charged gases called plasma.<\/p>
$\"An$
An artist\u2019s impression of two neutron stars merging and exploding as a kilonova. These rare events are expected to produce both gravitational waves and a short gamma-ray burst.Credit: ESO\/L. Cal\u00e7ada\/M. Kornmesser<\/figcaption><\/figure>
The ionosphere is so tenuous, spacecraft are able to hold orbits in most of the ionosphere.<\/p>
One such spacecraft is the China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite (CSES), which was launched in 2018 and monitors the top of the ionosphere.<\/p>
The CSES looks for possible links between changes in Earth’s ionosphere and seismic events like earthquakes.<\/p>
It can also study the impact of solar activity on Earth’s ionosphere.<\/p>
$\"A$
A solar flare erupting from the Sun. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>
Mirko and Pietro are part of the science team for CSES. They deduced that any disturbance created by the gamma-ray burst should have been detected by CSES.<\/p>
“We had looked for this effect from other GRBs in the past but had seen nothing,” says Pietro.\u00a0<\/p>
But this time, they were able to detect a strong signal from the burst, including a strong electric field variation in the top-side ionosphere.<\/p>
That’s even though the gamma-ray burst happened 2 billion years ago, 2 billion lightyears away.<\/p>
“Notably, this disturbance impacted the very lowest layers of Earth’s ionosphere, situated just tens of kilometres above our planet’s surface, leaving an imprint\u202fcomparable\u202fto that\u202fof a major solar flare,” says Laura Hayes, research fellows and solar physicist at ESA.<\/p>
In a worst-case scenario, the science team say a strong gamma-ray burst could damage the ozone layer, allowing ultraviolet radiation from the Sun to reach Earth’s surface.<\/p>
This may have been the cause of mass extinction events in Earth’s history.<\/p>
Now the team are going back to look at older CSES data and correlate it with other gamma-ray bursts seen by Integral.<\/p>
And a follow-up mission has been planned to further study the effects of gamma-ray bursts on Earth.<\/p>
The paper ‘First Evidence of Earth\u2019s top-side ionospheric electric field variation triggered by impulsive cosmic photons’ by Piersanti et al. is published in Nature Communications. DOI 10.1038\/s41467-023-42551-5<\/em><\/strong><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n
","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Iain Todd Published: Tuesday, 14 November 2023 at 16:28 PM Earth has been hit by a huge burst of gamma rays originating from a star nearly 2 billion lightyears away, according to the European Space Agency. The gamma ray burst caused a disturbance in Earth’s ionosphere and was detected by mutliple high-energy satellites in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":51761,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"4"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/11\/earth-hit-by-gamma-rays-from-exploding-star-2-billion-lightyears-away.jpg",1200,800,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/11\/earth-hit-by-gamma-rays-from-exploding-star-2-billion-lightyears-away-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/11\/earth-hit-by-gamma-rays-from-exploding-star-2-billion-lightyears-away-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/11\/earth-hit-by-gamma-rays-from-exploding-star-2-billion-lightyears-away-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/11\/earth-hit-by-gamma-rays-from-exploding-star-2-billion-lightyears-away-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/11\/earth-hit-by-gamma-rays-from-exploding-star-2-billion-lightyears-away.jpg",1200,800,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/11\/earth-hit-by-gamma-rays-from-exploding-star-2-billion-lightyears-away.jpg",1200,800,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Iain Todd Published: Tuesday, 14 November 2023 at 16:28 PM Earth has been hit by a huge burst of gamma rays originating from a star nearly 2 billion lightyears away, according to the European Space Agency. The gamma ray burst caused a disturbance in Earth’s ionosphere and was detected by mutliple high-energy satellites in…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/51760"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

Gamma-ray burst 221009A hit Earth’s atmosphere. Image captured by the XMM-Newton mission. Credit: ESA\/XMM-Newton\/M. Rigoselli (INAF)<\/figcaption><\/figure>
**Strongest gamma-ray burst ever measured<\/strong><\/h2>**Gamma-ray bursts are thought to be caused by exploding stars – supernovae<\/a> – or the collision of neutron stars<\/a>.<\/p>
The International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (Integral) was launched in 2002 with the aim of detecting gamma-ray bursts.<\/p>
The burst that hit Earth is known as GRB 221009A.<\/p>
\u201cIt was probably the brightest gamma-ray burst we have ever detected,\u201d says Mirko Piersanti, University of L\u2019Aquila, Italy, and lead author of the team behind the study.<\/p>
\u201cWe\u2019ve been measuring gamma-ray bursts since the 1960s, and this is the strongest ever measured,\u201d says co-author Pietro Ubertini, National Institute for Astrophysics, Rome, Italy, and the principal investigator for Intergral\u2019s IBIS instrument.<\/p>
$\"Artist's$
Artist’s impression of Integral, ESA’s International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory. Credit: ESA\/D. Ducros<\/figcaption><\/figure>
What happened?<\/strong><\/h2>
Statistically, a gamma-ray burst as strong as GRB 221009A hits Earth only once every 10,000 years.\u00a0<\/p>
The gamma rays impacted Earth over a period of 800 seconds, delivering enough energy to be detected by lighting detectors in India.<\/p>
Meanwhile in Germany, instruments recorded that Earth’s ionosphere was affected for several hours.<\/p>
The ionosphere is a layer of Earth\u2019s upper atmosphere stretching from about 50-950km in altitude that contains electrically charged gases called plasma.<\/p>
$\"An$
An artist\u2019s impression of two neutron stars merging and exploding as a kilonova. These rare events are expected to produce both gravitational waves and a short gamma-ray burst.Credit: ESO\/L. Cal\u00e7ada\/M. Kornmesser<\/figcaption><\/figure>
The ionosphere is so tenuous, spacecraft are able to hold orbits in most of the ionosphere.<\/p>
One such spacecraft is the China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite (CSES), which was launched in 2018 and monitors the top of the ionosphere.<\/p>
The CSES looks for possible links between changes in Earth’s ionosphere and seismic events like earthquakes.<\/p>
It can also study the impact of solar activity on Earth’s ionosphere.<\/p>
$\"A$
A solar flare erupting from the Sun. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>
Mirko and Pietro are part of the science team for CSES. They deduced that any disturbance created by the gamma-ray burst should have been detected by CSES.<\/p>
“We had looked for this effect from other GRBs in the past but had seen nothing,” says Pietro.\u00a0<\/p>
But this time, they were able to detect a strong signal from the burst, including a strong electric field variation in the top-side ionosphere.<\/p>
That’s even though the gamma-ray burst happened 2 billion years ago, 2 billion lightyears away.<\/p>
“Notably, this disturbance impacted the very lowest layers of Earth’s ionosphere, situated just tens of kilometres above our planet’s surface, leaving an imprint\u202fcomparable\u202fto that\u202fof a major solar flare,” says Laura Hayes, research fellows and solar physicist at ESA.<\/p>
In a worst-case scenario, the science team say a strong gamma-ray burst could damage the ozone layer, allowing ultraviolet radiation from the Sun to reach Earth’s surface.<\/p>
This may have been the cause of mass extinction events in Earth’s history.<\/p>
Now the team are going back to look at older CSES data and correlate it with other gamma-ray bursts seen by Integral.<\/p>
And a follow-up mission has been planned to further study the effects of gamma-ray bursts on Earth.<\/p>
The paper ‘First Evidence of Earth\u2019s top-side ionospheric electric field variation triggered by impulsive cosmic photons’ by Piersanti et al. is published in Nature Communications. DOI 10.1038\/s41467-023-42551-5<\/em><\/strong><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n
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By Iain Todd Published: Tuesday, 14 November 2023 at 16:28 PM Earth has been hit by a huge burst of gamma rays originating from a star nearly 2 billion lightyears away, according to the European Space Agency. The gamma ray burst caused a disturbance in Earth’s ionosphere and was detected by mutliple high-energy satellites in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":51761,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"4"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/11\/earth-hit-by-gamma-rays-from-exploding-star-2-billion-lightyears-away.jpg",1200,800,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/11\/earth-hit-by-gamma-rays-from-exploding-star-2-billion-lightyears-away-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/11\/earth-hit-by-gamma-rays-from-exploding-star-2-billion-lightyears-away-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/11\/earth-hit-by-gamma-rays-from-exploding-star-2-billion-lightyears-away-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/11\/earth-hit-by-gamma-rays-from-exploding-star-2-billion-lightyears-away-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/11\/earth-hit-by-gamma-rays-from-exploding-star-2-billion-lightyears-away.jpg",1200,800,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/11\/earth-hit-by-gamma-rays-from-exploding-star-2-billion-lightyears-away.jpg",1200,800,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Iain Todd Published: Tuesday, 14 November 2023 at 16:28 PM Earth has been hit by a huge burst of gamma rays originating from a star nearly 2 billion lightyears away, according to the European Space Agency. The gamma ray burst caused a disturbance in Earth’s ionosphere and was detected by mutliple high-energy satellites in…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/51760"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}