Brightest flash of light, believed to be from birth of a black hole, enchants astronomers

The brightest flash of light ever seen has been witnessed from an event that occurred 2.4 billion light years from Earth. Astronomers believe the event was likely triggered by the formation of a black hole. The burst of gamma-rays was first detected by orbiting telescopes on October 9, and its afterglow is still being watched by scientists across the world.

The gamma-ray burst lasted hundreds of seconds and astrophysicist Brendan O'Connor told AFP that such occurrences are thought to be caused by dying massive stars, greater than 30 times bigger than our Sun.

The star explodes in a supernova, collapses into a black hole, then matter forms in a disk around the black hole, falls inside, and is spewed out in a jet of energy that travels at 99.99 per cent the speed of light.

The source of origin was from the constellation Sagitta and the flash of light travelled an estimated 1.9 billion years to reach Earth. This is actually less than the current distance of the starting point since the universe is expanding. It is like watching a 1.9 billion-year-old recording of those events unfold before us.

The photons released by the blast carried a record 18 teraelectronvolts of energy (18 with 12 zeros behind it), and impacted long wave radio communications in Earth's ionosphere.

"It's really breaking records, both in the amount of photons, and the energy of the photons that are reaching us," said O'Connor.

"Something this bright, this nearby, is really a once-in-a-century event," he added.

Gamma-ray research started in the 1960s and astronomers happened to stumble upon it by chance. US satellites were trying to detect whether the Soviet Union was detonating bombs in space, but in fact ended up finding such bursts originating from outside the Milky Way.

"Gamma-ray bursts in general release the same amount of energy that our Sun produces over its entire lifetime in the span of a few seconds, and this event is the brightest gamma ray burst," said O'Connor.

This gamma-ray burst, known as GRB 221009A, was first spotted by telescopes including NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, and Wind spacecraft on Sunday morning Eastern time.

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