Catching Some Gamma Rays
Gamma ray burster GRB 110328A as imaged by the SWIFT spacecraft. GRB's occur suddenly and briefly, often in places of the sky where nothing was seen before. SWIFT was specifically designed to catch GRB's on the fly, focusing on them immediately after they occur. Curiously, this GRB, which was first seen March 28, has lasted for days. Gamma radiation has repeatedly flared then faded. Space.com article Scientists are not sure why this gamma ray burst is so long-lasting. They think that its power source must be a massive Black Hole.
Labels: black holes, gamma rays
posted by L. Riofrio at 4:55 PM
2 Comments:
Enhanced emission from GRB 110328A could be evidence for tidal disruption of a star
Ulisses Barres de Almeida, Alessandro De Angelis
(Submitted on 13 Apr 2011)
On March 28, Swift's Burst Alert Telescope discovered a source in the constellation Draco when it erupted in a series of X-ray blasts. The explosion, catalogued as gamma-ray burst (GRB) 110328A, repeatedly flared in the following days, making the interpretation of the event as a GRB unlikely. Here we suggest that the event could be due to the tidal disruption of a star that approaches the pericentric distance of a black hole, and we use this fact to derive bounds on the physical characteristics of such system, based on the variability timescales and energetics of the observed X-ray emission.
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/1104.2528
GRB's and supernovae could all have started from Black Holes.
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