Signal Buried in Biggest Explosion Ever Seen Hints at Total Annihilation
Every now and again, the night sky lights up with a spectacular explosion that blazes with the most energetic light our Universe can produce. Known as gamma-ray bursts, they can release in a few seconds what our Sun will emit over its lifetime.
Now scientists have found a never-before-seen signal buried in the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation delivered by the brightest gamma ray burst ever recorded.
That signal is an emission light – a bright region in the gamma-ray spectrum produced by something emitting light in that specific wavelength range. And that something, scientists have determined, is complete and utter destruction: the mutual annihilation of electron-positron pairs, matter and its antimatter counterpart.
Nicknamed ‘the BOAT’ (short for the Brightest Of All Time), the burst was detected back in October of 2022. It was the result of a huge star exploding as its core collapsed into a black hole, spilling out so many energetic photons we had a hard time taking accurate measurements.
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