Gamma Ray Bursts are the brightest things to happen to the universe since its beginning - extraordinarily intense electromagnetic events releasing more energy per second than the sun does in a billion years, and basically an excuse for astronomers to use every awesome adjective they know. But some have been seen to last far longer than standard theories could explain, and a new mechanism has been put forward: EATING STARS.
GRBs are an incredible demonstration of just how big a universe is: they’re extremely rare, only a few per galaxy per million years, and we see about one a day. Think about what that implies (but stop when your head starts to spin - we’re trying to educate you here, not stick you in a Total Perspective Vortex). They’re so interesting NASA launched a satellite just for them, the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission - a mission so advanced that “Swift” isn’t even an acronym. They just liked the word.
GRBs are bursts of plasma ejected from the poles of dying stars but Swift observed that the central jet engine causing this emission lasted longer than the burst, and sometimes far longer than previous models could explain (almost three days). Now scientists from the University of Leeds have put forward an explanation for how this intergalactically emitting dynamo could endure so long: it’s eating a star.
By consuming a nearby star the black hole would be sucking up an enormous amount of matter, and if it’s rapidly spinning (as many of these holes in spacetime are, a combination of concepts that really proves human language wasn’t built for relativity) it can twist it all along the intense magnetic field lines being dragged around the event. The gigantic magnetic stresses involved are what give the burst its incredible energy, lasting as long as it takes for the entire star to be consumed.
Reminder: this is not the plot from an episode of Voltron. This is really happening, all over the place, and we have an actual robotic spacecraft up there watching them. Science is awesome.
Luke McKinney
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