Mystery behind brightest explosion ever seen is finally solved

The mystery behind the brightest explosion ever seen has finally been solved.

In October last year, the Earth was hit by a blast that came to be known as the Brightest of All Time. It was recorded by telescopes across the world, and scientists have been scrambling to explain it ever since.

Now researchers believe they may understand why that gamma ray burst was quite so intense. It was pointed directly at Earth and pulled along a large amount of stellar material.

That’s according to a new paper published in the journal Science Advances. While scientists have suggested before that the brightness of the blast was the result of its angle, but some mystery remained: the edges of the jet could not be seen.

“The slow fade of the afterglow is not characteristic of a narrow jet of gas, and knowing this made us suspect there was an additional reason for the intensity of the explosion, and our mathematical models have borne this out,” said Hendrik Van Earthen from the University of Bath.

“Our work clearly shows that the GRB had a unique structure, with observations gradually revealing a narrow jet embedded within a wider gas outflow where an isolated jet would normally be expected.”

The work is described in a new paper, ‘A structured jet explains the extreme GRB 221009’, published in the journal Science Advances.