Two violent explosions in galaxies billions of light-years away recently produced the brightest light in the Universe. Scientists caught it in action for the first time, Eurasia Diary reports citing Science Alert.
The explosions were gamma-ray bursts: short eruptions of the most energetic form of light in the Universe.
Telescopes caught the first burst in July 2018. The second burst, captured in January, produced light containing about 100 billion times as much energy as the light that's visible to our human eyes.
Gamma-ray bursts appear without warning and only last a few seconds, so astronomers had to move quickly. Just 50 seconds after satellites spotted the January explosion, telescopes on Earth swivelled to catch a flood of thousands of particles of light.
"These are by far the highest-energy photons ever discovered from a gamma-ray burst," Elisa Bernardini, a gamma-ray scientist, said in a press release.
Over 300 scientists around the world studied the results; their work was published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Gamma-ray bursts happen almost every day, without warning, and they only last a few seconds. Yet the high-energy explosions remain something of a mystery to scientists.
Astronomers think they come from colliding neutron stars or from supernovae – events in which stars run out of fuel, give in to their own gravity, and collapse into black holes.
"Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions known in the Universe and typically release more energy in just a few seconds than our Sun during its entire lifetime," gamma-ray scientist David Berge said in the release.
"They can shine through almost the entire visible Universe."
Scientists expect to learn more as they turn telescopes toward more gamma-ray bursts like these in the future.
"Thanks to these new ground-based detections, we're seeing the gamma rays from gamma-ray bursts in a whole new way," Hays said.
This article was originally published by Business Insider.