Brightest Explosion Ever Observed Overwhelms Telescopes

Artist's impression of the rotating, highly-magnetised neutron star which is SGR 1806-20, undergoing a 'quake' at its surface, resulting in the gamma-ray outburst. See more images


"Southampton, UK (SPX) Feb 18, 2005
Scientists have detected a flash of light from across the Galaxy so powerful that it bounced off the Moon and lit up the Earth's upper atmosphere.
This "giant flare" was the brightest explosion ever detected from beyond the Solar System. For over a tenth of a second the remarkable flare was actually brighter than a full moon.

NASA and European satellites and ground-based telescopes around the world detected the giant flare on 27 December 2004. Scientists from twenty institutes joined the observations. Two science teams report about this unprecedented event in a forthcoming issue of Nature.

The light detected from the giant flare was far brighter in gamma rays than visible light or X-rays. It was probably created by an unprecedented eruption on the surface of an exotic neutron star which is classed both as an ultra-magnetic magnetar and as a soft gamma repeater (SGR).

The designation of the neutron star that erupted is SGR 1806-20, about 50,000 light years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius.

A number of important questions arise from this discovery:


Are some gamma ray bursts (thought to be very distant black-hole-forming star explosions) actually from neutron star eruptions in nearby galaxies?
What mechanism could unleash so much energy from a magnetar?
Could an even larger influx of gamma rays have caused mass extinction on Earth in the past?"

www.spacedaily.com...

Interesting date on this "explosion" Dec 27th 2004. Could advance gamma radiation have triggered the great Indo-quake?

Nice find! But no, the gamma rays couldn't have triggered anything. If they were (somehow) strong enough to trigger a quake, they would have triggered every single fault line on the planet. Remember, that energy was hitting 1/2 of the world at the same time, and there are a lot of other earthquake zones in that same area.

If it had been triggering quakes, you'd also have seen Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Eastern edge of the Ring of Fire all going into massive earthquake mode at the very same second.

How comes it has taken a month and a half for this to be announced?

I thought this was pretty cool - "We have observed an object only 20 kilometres across, on the other side of our Galaxy, releasing more energy in a tenth of a second than the Sun emits in 100,000 years"

Originally posted by DrHoracid
Interesting date on this "explosion" Dec 27th 2004. Could advance gamma radiation have triggered the great Indo-quake?

Fantastic picture. How about gravity waves? Was the Indian Ocean 'facing' the explosion? What was the exact chronological relation of the two events?

[edit on 18-2-2005 by Chakotay]

Maybe not only a gamma ray, but perhaps also Gravity waves were generated by this powerfull event, theoratically these could have a minor influence on earth rotation etc....

Neutron stars are very interesting, I heard there gravity is so great that if something like a Marshmellow would impact one it would hit with the force of a nuclear weapon.

Could you imagine how much energy a large asteroid strike would produce if it hit one of those

Originally posted by Chakotay How about gravity waves?

Do not gravity waves propagate instantly? Or at the least extremely faster than light? Such that when the gamma rays arrive the gravity waves have long since arrived? Also, the gravity waves would be infinitiesimally small, they couldn't possibly have anything do do with that tsunami earthquake. Even the gama rays, why would they have an affect? They can shake fault lines but not be noticed by humans walking around?

Do not gravity waves propagate instantly? Or at the least extremely faster than light?

Short answer no. That was newtons theory in which Einstein proved him wrong. Gravity Wave propogate at the speed of c.