Scientists have identified mysterious gamma ray bursts erupting from deep space that have a mysterious time-reversing effect
- Gamma ray bursts are the brightest and most energetic events in the universe
- They are believed to be formed when neutron stars collide
- This triggers the release of an impactor – a clump of particles electrons and ions
- These high-speed bursts create ’emissions’ that appear to repeat backwards as the waves are reflected through the cloud of debris caused by the supernova
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Gamma ray bursts identified erupting from deep space have been found to exhibit some of the most bizarre galactic behaviour ever observed, scientists say.
The six extremely high energy bursts of electromagnetic energy, which were identified more than years ago, showed evidence of complex time-reversible wavelike behaviour – in which time itself appears to repeat backwards.
Scientists do not believe the behaviour is evidence of time travel.
Instead, they now think the repeating emissions are like a high speed release of charged particles that bounces around in galactic debris, like an echo.
This generates an unusual signal that is then further distorted by interference – or noise – over billions of light years, scientists say.
Understanding the phenomenon could help us understand more about the death of massive stars and even the formation of black holes.
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Gamma-ray bursts are the brightest and most energetic events in the Universe and are caused by colliding neutron stars and, potentially, other events including the collapse of a rapidly spinning star into either a neutron star, quark star or a black hole (stock)
Gamma-ray bursts are the brightest and most energetic events in the universe.
These can only be detected when the beams are pointed directly at Earth.
Most of these take place billions of light-years away and can last from a few milliseconds to a few hours when observed from Earth.
The source of gamma ray bursts remains largely unknown, with some experts believing they are caused by colliding neutron stars.
Others have pointed to the collapse of a rapidly-spinning star into either a neutron star, quark star or a black hole as the cause.
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The resulting supernova or hypernova from these cataclysmic celestial events is believed to produce the gamma ray bursts.
Because the signals happen so far away from Earth, the clarity of the signal is often degraded by interference, known as noise.
Noise lowers the resolution of the signal and can lead to ‘smearing’, a side-effect which results in a triple-peaked appearance for medium bursts, and a single peak for faint ones.
In a bid to reduce this phenomenon, the researchers took a closer look at six incredibly bright bursts found in the data from the BATSE instrument on Nasa’s Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, in operation from 1991 to 2000.
Gamma Ray Bursts happen so far away from Earth, the clarity of the signal is often degraded by interference, known as noise. Noise lowers the resolution of the signal and can lead to ‘smearing’ (stock)
WHAT ARE GAMMA RAY BURSTS?
Gamma ray bursts (GRBs), energetic jets of gamma rays that come from black holes, can be created in two different ways – resulting in long or short GRBs.
They are created from some of the most violent deaths in the universe.
Long GRBs last about a minute, and scientist think they are produced by supernova: when the core of a massive star collapses to become a black hole.
Short GRBs last a second and are produced when two neutron stars merge.
It is thought the event could be caused by an impactor – a cluster of electrons and ions – being spat out at extremely high velocity.
These then triggered the release of an ’emission’ which appeared to repeat backwards as the signal reflected through the cloud of material from the explosion of a star, like the reverberations of an echo.
Another possible cause could be if the cloud possesses a form of radial bilateral symmetry – concentric rings, for example.
The impactor could then move through these rings without being reflected while giving the appearance of a time-reversed pulse.
‘The existence of time-reversed pulse structure leads us to believe that physical models of GRB pulses must contain strong physical symmetries and an interaction with a single impactor,’ the College of Charleston researchers wrote in their paper.
‘We have explored a number of simple kinematic models, and find that either the distribution of impacted material in a [gamma-ray burst] jet must be bilateral-symmetrically distributed and impacted by a single impactor, a physical phenomenon is responsible for reversing the course of a single impactor, or a single impactor creates emission in bilateral-symmetrically distributed material as it passes through it.’
The research is currently available on pre peer-review site arXiv and is set to be published in The Astrophysical Journal in the near future.
WHAT ARE BLACK HOLES?
Black holes are so dense and their gravitational pull is so strong that no form of radiation can escape them – not even light.
They act as intense sources of gravity which hoover up dust and gas around them.
Their intense gravitational pull is thought to be what stars in galaxies orbit around.
How they are formed is still poorly understood.
Supermassive black holes are incredibly dense areas in the centre of galaxies with masses that can be billions of times that of the sun. They cause dips in space-time (artist’s impression) and even light cannot escape their gravitational pull
Astronomers believe they may form when a large cloud of gas up to 100,000 times bigger than the sun, collapses into a black hole.
Many of these black hole seeds then merge to form much larger supermassive black holes, which are found at the centre of every known massive galaxy.
Alternatively, a supermassive black hole seed could come from a giant star, about 100 times the sun’s mass, that ultimately forms into a black hole after it runs out of fuel and collapses.
When these giant stars die, they also go ‘supernova’, a huge explosion that expels the matter from the outer layers of the star into deep space.
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