14 DAY TRIAL // Just yesterday, researchers with the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, US, announced that, earlier this year, the telescope at the McDonald Observatory in Texas detected light originating from a massive cosmic explosion that occurred shortly after the Big Bang.
The explosion that let out this light was that of a fairly large star, and researchers say that it took place about 1.5 billion years following the universe's coming into being.
This means that, in order to reach our planet, the intense light that the telescope at the McDonald Observatory spotted on April 19 at about 11 p.m. local time had to travel for about 12.1 billion years, astronomers explain.
As detailed on the official website for the Southern Methodist University, light resulting from massive and high-energy explosions of a star is known to the scientific community as a gamma-ray burst.
According to Farley Ferrante, a graduate student in the University's Department of Physics, evidence indicates that such explosions occur when a star reaches the end of its life and collapses. The result is a massive release of energy.
“As NASA points out, gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the universe since the Big Bang. These bursts release more energy in 10 seconds than our Earth’s sun during its entire expected lifespan of 10 billion years,” Farley Ferrante explains.
It is estimated that, in order to release this much energy and trigger gamma-ray bursts, the exploding stars behind such cosmic events need be as big as 50 solar masses.
Physics professor Robert Kehoe goes on to detail that, in terms of brightness, the gamma ray burst spotted by the telescope at the McDonald Observatory on April 19 was about 200 times dimmer than what folks can expect to notice with the naked eye.
In case anyone was wondering, researchers do their best to collect as much data on such gamma-ray bursts as possible in the hope that this information will help them gain a better understanding of what the universe looked like when it was much younger than it currently is.
“At the time of this gamma-ray burst’s explosion, the universe looked vastly different than it does now. It was an early stage of galaxy formation. There weren’t heavy elements to make Earth-like planets,” Robert Kehoe says.
“So this is a glimpse at the early universe. Observing gamma-ray bursts is important for gaining information about the early universe,” the Southern Methodist University specialist adds.