Introduction
Our Sun produces enough energy in one second to sustain life on earth for millions of years. However, there is an energy far more powerful than our Sun that makes it pale in comparison. Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBs) are the most energetic type of light in the universe and produce more energy in one second than the sun will produce in its ten-billion year lifetime. These dramatically powerful energetic explosions often originate billions of light-years from Earth yet produce a light so bright that it can be seen through binoculars, making them unequivocally the most powerful burst of energy that we have observed in our universe (Bennett, Donahue, Schneider, & Voit, 2014). This phenomenon has long fascinated scientists and astronomers …show more content…
The majority of GRBs are now believed to signal the creation of a black hole which creates an explosion of high-energy material (Schwarzschil, 2014). This high-energy material is expelled in jets, mainly composed of electrons, positrons, photons and a small amount of baryons, traveling nearly at the speed-of-light (Taboada, 2011). The energy is released so intensely and instantaneously that in just the first few seconds of the burst, the amount of energy released is equal to what would take the Sun nearly ten-billion years to produce. There is no other process in the universe able to produce this much energy (Bhat, 2011). Additionally, if a GRB was able to distribute itself in all directions equally, such as the way a star does, its luminosity would be that of the combined brightness of a million galaxies such as our Milky Way, albeit briefly (Bennett et al., …show more content…
They arise from the core collapse of massive stars which reside in regions of space experiencing new and active star formation (Savaglio, 2013) and as they are intensely luminous and high in both gamma-ray emission and multi-wavelength afterglow their rate is relative to the star formation rate (Gehrels & Meszaros 2012). However, the core collapse from a supernova explosion from the death of a star that results in the formation of a neutron star is not powerful to create or explain LGRBs. Instead, a LGRB can only be explained as arising when an ultra-energetic supernova becomes a hypernova and creates a black hole that consumes matter so immediately that it releases a substantial amount of energy of the matter which is not consumed (Bennett et al., 2014). The fundamental physics of this collapse of a star and was first proposed and developed by University of California physicist Dr. Stanford Woosley and his Collapsar Model remains the leading explanation for LGRBs today (Taboada,
Our Sun produces enough energy in one second to sustain life on earth for millions of years. However, there is an energy far more powerful than our Sun that makes it pale in comparison. Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBs) are the most energetic type of light in the universe and produce more energy in one second than the sun will produce in its ten-billion year lifetime. These dramatically powerful energetic explosions often originate billions of light-years from Earth yet produce a light so bright that it can be seen through binoculars, making them unequivocally the most powerful burst of energy that we have observed in our universe (Bennett, Donahue, Schneider, & Voit, 2014). This phenomenon has long fascinated scientists and astronomers …show more content…
The majority of GRBs are now believed to signal the creation of a black hole which creates an explosion of high-energy material (Schwarzschil, 2014). This high-energy material is expelled in jets, mainly composed of electrons, positrons, photons and a small amount of baryons, traveling nearly at the speed-of-light (Taboada, 2011). The energy is released so intensely and instantaneously that in just the first few seconds of the burst, the amount of energy released is equal to what would take the Sun nearly ten-billion years to produce. There is no other process in the universe able to produce this much energy (Bhat, 2011). Additionally, if a GRB was able to distribute itself in all directions equally, such as the way a star does, its luminosity would be that of the combined brightness of a million galaxies such as our Milky Way, albeit briefly (Bennett et al., …show more content…
They arise from the core collapse of massive stars which reside in regions of space experiencing new and active star formation (Savaglio, 2013) and as they are intensely luminous and high in both gamma-ray emission and multi-wavelength afterglow their rate is relative to the star formation rate (Gehrels & Meszaros 2012). However, the core collapse from a supernova explosion from the death of a star that results in the formation of a neutron star is not powerful to create or explain LGRBs. Instead, a LGRB can only be explained as arising when an ultra-energetic supernova becomes a hypernova and creates a black hole that consumes matter so immediately that it releases a substantial amount of energy of the matter which is not consumed (Bennett et al., 2014). The fundamental physics of this collapse of a star and was first proposed and developed by University of California physicist Dr. Stanford Woosley and his Collapsar Model remains the leading explanation for LGRBs today (Taboada,