{"id":254276,"date":"2025-11-10T04:22:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T04:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/254276\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T04:22:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T04:22:11","slug":"extremely-unusual-explosion-far-beyond-our-galaxy-has-astronomers-baffled-heres-what-it-could-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/254276\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Extremely unusual&#8217; explosion far beyond our Galaxy has astronomers baffled. Here&#8217;s what it could be"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A giant gamma-ray burst (GRB) has been detected that has astronomers scratching their heads.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.skyatnightmagazine.com\/space-science\/what-is-a-gamma-ray-burst\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Gamma ray bursts<\/a> are some of the most powerful explosions in the Universe and are thought to be produced by the catastrophic destruction of stars.<\/p>\n<p>But this new explosion, spotted a few billion lightyears outside our Galaxy and named GRB 250702B, was unlike any seen before, bringing this theory into question.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Gamma-ray-burst-221009A.jpg\" alt=\"Gamma-ray burst 221009A hit Earth's atmosphere and is the brightest ever detected. Image captured by the XMM-Newton mission. Credit: ESA\/XMM-Newton\/M. Rigoselli (INAF)\" class=\"wp-image-143067\"\/>Credit: ESA\/XMM-Newton\/M. Rigoselli (INAF)<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This event is unlike any other seen in 50 years of GRB observations,&#8221; says Antonio Martin-Carrillo of University College Dublin and co-lead author of the study.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Gamma-ray bursts are catastrophic events; they\u2019re expected to go off just once because the source that produced them does not survive the dramatic explosion.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This event baffled us, not only because it showed repeated powerful activity, but also because it seemed to be periodic, which has never been seen before.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>To add to the mystery, while most gamma-ray bursts last just a few milliseconds or minutes, this one lasted a day.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is 100 to 1,000 times longer than most gamma-ray bursts,&#8221; explains the study\u2019s co-author Andrew Levan.<\/p>\n<p>Various telescopes were trained on where the gamma-ray burst was thought to originate, with ESO\u2019s Very Large Telescope placing it outside our Galaxy.<\/p>\n<p>The fact that it\u2019s so far away means that the explosion must have been incredibly powerful.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"497\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/GRB-250702B.jpg\" alt=\"Gamma-ray burst GRB 250702B, as seen by ESO's Very Large Telescope. Credit: ESO\/A. Levan, A. Martin-Carrillo et al.\" class=\"wp-image-178264\"\/>Gamma-ray burst GRB 250702B, as seen by ESO&#8217;s Very Large Telescope. Credit: ESO\/A. Levan, A. Martin-Carrillo et al.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We\u2019re still not sure what produced this or if we can ever really find out,&#8221; says Martin-Carrillo, &#8220;but with this research, we\u2019ve made a huge step towards understanding this extremely unusual object.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>One possible cause for the gamma-ray burst could be a massive star collapsing into itself, releasing enormous amounts of energy in the process.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If this is a massive star, it is a collapse unlike anything we have ever witnessed before,&#8221; says Levan, referring to the fact that, if it was a massive star, the gamma-ray burst would likely have lasted just a few seconds.<\/p>\n<p>The other cause could be a star being ripped apart by a black hole.<\/p>\n<p>That, the team say, could produce a day-long GRB, but to explain other aspects of the explosion would mean an unusual star being destroyed by an even more unusual black hole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A giant gamma-ray burst (GRB) has been detected that has astronomers scratching their heads. Gamma ray bursts are&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-254276","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}