Earth was hit by an enormous burst of gamma rays! #shorts

An enormous burst of gamma rays was detected by our Integral space telescope, in October 2022. Such disturbances are usually associated with energetic particle events on the Sun but this one was the result of an exploding star almost two billion light-years away.

The blast caused a significant disturbance to our planet’s outer layer, the ionosphere. During the 800 seconds that the gamma rays were impacting, the burst delivered enough energy to activate lightning detectors in India. Instruments in Germany picked up signs that Earth’s ionosphere was disturbed for several hours by the blast.

The blast even triggered instruments generally reserved for studying the immense explosions in the Sun’s atmosphere known as solar flares.

Such an effect has been speculated to be a possible cause of some of the mass extinction events known to have taken place on Earth in the past. But to investigate the idea, we will need a lot more data.

📹 ESA – European Space Agency

📸 NASA/Swift/Cruz deWilde

#ESA
#ESAIntegral
#GammaRayBursts

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