The Largest Explosion Ever Detected
On Sunday 9th October 2022, Scientists detected an explosion in space so extreme, they were convinced it had to have come from nearby, and were initially struggling to tell if it was X-Rays or Gamma Rays.
It turned out to be 2.5 billion light years away, hardly next door, although as far as Gamma Ray Bursts go, the closest ever detected.
It is thought to represent an outburst of 18 teraelectronvolts, and while thankfully far enough away to be safe for us, had it been nearer (ie, within our own Milky Way) then the consequences would have been mass extinction.
In fact, some of the Earths past mass extinctions are thought to lie with such events, which is sobering thought, our Universe isn’t the kinder garden that protects us all from our often infantile mistakes, it’s hostile and we’re incredibly lucky to have found a quiet corner, at least for a few hundred million years or so.
So what causes these massive explosions, truth is, there’s no certainty, the leading theories point to some of the most extreme objects in our own universe, colliding neutron stars or maybe even colliding black holes, either way. The good news is, almost all of these events focus out the energy along the polar lines, like search lights from pulsars, the beams cut across space, the chances of us being in the path are incredibly tiny, but .. to quote Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds, “Still they come !”
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New fear unlocked.