A New Mystery in Outer Space The First Ever Gamma Ray Less GRB

Hello InfoPerson, this is Anton and in this video we're going to discuss a new mystery unfolding in real time in outer space. A mystery that was just uncovered by a brand new telescope inspired by, of all things, a lobster's eye. And in this case it's a mystery in regards to one of these. One of these super powerful explosions in outer space that scientists actually thought we understood pretty well. But turns out that's not the case and turns out another one was just discovered that does not really make a lot of sense. And so even though we understand things like, for example, tidal disruption events caused by black holes, gamma ray bursts caused by collapsing stars and of course supernova caused by exploding stars, here on March 5th of 2024 a telescope referred to as the Einstein probe detected a completely new strange explosion that seems to be different from everything we've known so far and does not fit into any known definition. The explosion that flashed twice and then faded away in a way that challenges almost every theory we have for what this particular explosion could be. And so in this video we're going to take a look at some of the new discoveries and some of the new evidence, talk about what scientists have ruled out so far and explore the science behind this very bizarre and very violent explosion. And I guess let's start with the obvious. So what exactly happened and what detected it? Well here just as a side note in the last six or so years we've actually seen a kind of a renaissance and a sudden increase in interest for a lot of different x-ray observatories. As a matter of fact between 2019 and 2024 five separate missions have been launched by five separate agencies all essentially dedicated to studying the x-rays. And so in 2019 we had the IROZETA mission whose mission is to map the sky in the x-ray spectrum, which by the way it has done and you can learn about this in one of the videos in the description. Then we have a joint mission by NASA and Italian Space Agency launched in December of 2021 referred to as IXPE, a mission whose focus is different types of exotic objects such as magnetars and black holes. Then we have the Chinese LEIA and the Einstein probe that you see right here, launched in 2022 and 2024. XRISM launched by the Japanese Space Agency collaborating with NASA, mostly responsible for studying a lot of hot gas. And EXPOSAT by the Indian Space Agency, dedicated to studying x-ray polarization and a lot of bright cosmic sources. But it's this mission the Einstein probe that actually uses a lobster eye technology to monitor white regions of the night skies in the x-rays, mostly looking for a lot of transient events or basically very bright explosions, that has now officially caught a few of these very unusual events. And so while most telescopes have a relatively narrow view, the lobster eye here allows it to see a much wider area with relatively high sensitivity. And so in 2024 it was able to The first one lasted for approximately 120 seconds and the second one, a much weaker one, approximately 250 seconds with about a 200 second pause between them. And while in the world of astronomy how fast something fades is actually just as important as how bright it is. And in this case this source was really strange because it seems to have dropped in its x-ray brightness extremely fast in just two days. And in the meanwhile radio telescopes like the Australia Telescope Compact Array also picked up a signal but this one did not disappear for several months. And it's this combination of a rapidly dimming x-ray mixed with an extremely long radio signal that's actually kind of surprising and somewhat atypical. In other words we've never actually seen anything like this and there's no physical explanation for what seems to have happened here. And so in order to understand what this could be researchers first of all compared all of the data they had with all of the other known explosions and then tried to play a kind of a detective and essentially cross out anything that did not make sense. And so first they looked at the most obvious culprit, a black hole. Could this be some kind of a tidal disruption event when a black hole destroys some kind of an object? Well as we've discussed in previous videos these do happen pretty frequently and do exhibit slightly different effects but normally these events take months or even years to fade away and produce a very specific type of a curve that was extremely different in its appearance. And so compared to a typical TDE here this double explosion disappeared very fast. Then they considered x-ray binaries. In essence some kind of a binary object involving possibly a black hole or a neutron star with a star in its orbit. And usually in these systems as the black hole or the neutron star feeds on its partner it can occasionally, especially when it kind of overfeeds itself, produce very powerful explosions that do emit a lot of x-rays. And while some of these events can be short-lived they don't typically produce very strong long-lasting radio signals that were observed here. Okay what about just a typical stellar flare for example from some kind of a star maybe even similar to our sun producing some kind of a sudden emission. Well our sun does actually do this and some distant stars are known to produce super flares but once again radio emissions from a stellar flare usually only last minutes or maybe hours. But the radio signal from this event lasted for weeks implying something much more energetic and something that potentially involved a lot of gas surrounding some kind of a In this case they also ruled out the mysterious magnetars which are known to produce unusual explosions once in a while. But in this case magnetars usually peak and disappear in less than a second, far too fast for what's observed here. Which essentially leaves us with maybe one possible explanation that still kind of makes sense or at least kind of fits with what we've So here this could be some kind of a gamma-ray burst and in this case gamma-ray bursts or GRBs are known to be some of the most powerful explosions in the universe very often caused by very massive stars collapsing and releasing a lot of energy all at once very often through these very powerful astrophysical jets. Although in some cases they can also be produced by colliding neutron stars which very often result in a slightly different observation. And while this double flash pattern is actually extremely common for gamma-ray bursts and has been seen in most of them. As a matter of fact pretty much all gamma-ray bursts are also followed by a very long radio signal that fades over time and sort of matches the same afterglow observed from this event. This is usually the result of massive jets of particles moving near the speed of light and interacting with a lot of gas on the way. Except that there is maybe one catch. There were no actual gamma-rays detected from the source. In other words this event was basically only visible in the x-rays and radio light but no gamma-rays were detected coming from anywhere. In other words it was a gamma-ray-less gamma-ray burst. Although here scientists behind this paper are referring to this as gamma-ray dark transient or essentially the first such event that produces no gamma-rays and only produces x-rays. But in this case that doesn't actually make a lot of sense because all of the current models suggest that these events are so powerful that gamma-rays have to be produced. And so what explanations do scientists propose here and why did this event only produce x-rays? Well first this could be just maybe a little bit misaligned or essentially this could be an off-axis jet. In other words instead of being pointed directly at us this jet could be pointed a little bit to the side and so the gamma-rays are just not visible to us but the x-rays are. Although in this case it doesn't really explain why we're seeing no gamma-rays at all. Technically it should be producing something. Then maybe this is just a result of some kind of a jet that was not fully developed. So basically here a star begins to collapse and tries to launch a jet but it just does not have enough energy to fully break through the outer layer and instead of gamma-rays produces x-rays. And well actually this explanation does make sense. Lastly this could also be because of the composition of the jet itself. It might be loaded with just way too much heavy matter which seems to slow down the jet dramatically and prevents it from efficient gamma-ray production. In other words the best explanations essentially point at this just being some kind of an inefficient gamma-ray burst. But right now we don't really know exactly what's happening and for all we know this could be a completely new phenomenon involving some kind of a new object we've never seen before. Which is actually not impossible because it was really only like a decade ago that researchers discovered a new phenomenon that we now refer to as FRBs, fast radio bursts. Events that seem to be caused by possibly neutron stars or magnetars but that even today we still don't understand. And so finding some kind of a new type of an explosion is actually not that unexpected. As a matter of fact this is not the only unusual discovery from this row because just two weeks later it also found this. Another explosion that was actually really far away at a redshift of four where strangely enough the x-rays and gamma-rays arrived at different time. Now normally we expect them to arrive relatively close to each other but here this event on March 15th 2024 seemed to produce x-rays for at least 17 minutes and they seem to have arrived six minutes before gamma-rays. Which has never been seen before because it was always assumed that gamma-rays are produced first and they technically should arrive around the same time. And so within just the last two years this particular telescope has already made some really exciting discoveries. There are sort of challenging current models for how we think gamma-ray bursts are produced and how stars seem to collapse. But at the same time it's obviously helping us map this invisible violent part of the universe that can only be seen and discovered using these extremely specific telescopes. And so because of projects like EuroZeta and now the Einstein probe astronomers are now able to see and study the x-ray universe with a lot more precision. And what you're seeing here is essentially one of the newest x-ray maps of the Milky Way galaxy. But the big takeaway from all of this is that even today the universe is still quite mysterious and actually way more complex than the current models suggest. With these new instruments that were only launched in the last six years essentially showing us a lot of these very strange atypical explosions that we've never seen before because previous telescopes were just not sensitive enough. But as we get more data and as more similar events are discovered it will hopefully help us understand the universe just a little bit better and possibly explain some of the other mysteries that could have been hiding in plain sight this whole time. And if you actually want to learn about some of these mysteries that have been already resolved check out some of the previous videos on for example the odd radio circles and the FRBs in the description below. On that note thank you for watching, subscribe, come back tomorrow to learn something else, support this channel on Patreon where you can find additional videos, videos without any ads and can donate directly or by joining a channel membership that grants you early access and a few additional things. You can also support this channel by buying the wonderful personal t-shirt in the description below. Stay wonderful, I'll see you tomorrow and as always bye-bye.