Gamma-ray bursts were once a mystery that astronomers were pessimistic about solving. There is now an accepted theory that gamma ray bursts are energy flowing from stars exploding as supernovae. Or from the collision of two dense neutron stars, whose gamma-ray bursts have been measured since the 1960s.
Recently, an international team of astronomers in collaboration with the National Institute of Astrophysics in Rome, Italy, released their investigation of the massive gamma-ray burst that struck Earth, called GRB 221009A, on October 9, 2022, and which was detected by several satellites orbiting nearby. The Integrated Space Telescope, which is the International Gamma-Ray Laboratory for Astrophysics of the European Space Agency, and the explosion caused a massive disturbance in the Earth’s outer atmosphere for about 13 minutes, and astronomers described it as the most powerful explosion ever seen. Along with explaining its origin, about 2000 million years ago, in a galaxy far away from our own Milky Way. A major star faced a catastrophe and ended its life by exploding in a supernova. It emits enormous gamma rays. Those rays traveled through the universe and reached Earth last year.
Newly released studies indicate that these gamma-ray bursts cause large variations in the electric field of the Earth’s ionosphere. It is the upper layer of the atmosphere located about 50 to 950 kilometers from the Earth’s surface. It is home to an ionized gas called plasma. Instruments on Earth show that gamma rays disrupt the ionosphere for several hours. Lightning detectors were also destroyed in India.
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