Two cool bits of news have come out of NASA this past week.
First up, in deep space, we've spotted an explosion the likes of which we've never observed. Gamma-ray burst GRB 080916C was observed last September 15th in
the Carina constellation, and it was one for the record books. Not only
was it the first Gamma-ray burst ever to be captured in high-resolution thanks to
NASA's new Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, but it now holds the records for the largest energy output, highest initial energy burst, and fastest
particle motion ever recorded for a gamma-ray burst.
GRBs are thought to result from heavy mass stars
collapsing into black holes, and represent some of the largest
explosions in the universe. GRB 080916C was observed by both
the Fermi's main telescope and its Gamma-ray Burst Monitor system. Combined, these two pieces of equipment observed gamma-rays with energy levels from 100 MeV all the way up to and over 1 GeV—for comparison, visible light
has an energy of about two to three electron volts.
Using equipment at the European Southern Observatory in Chile,
researchers computed that GRB 080916C happened 12.2 billion light years
away from Earth. based on this distance measurement, researchers were able
to infer—given the assumption that the energy release was
spherically symmetric—that this burst released almost 9000 times
more energy than a typical supernovae. This correlates to matter being
ejected from the blast at a minimum�velocity of 99.9999 percent the speed of light. These results are
published online in this week's edition of ScienceExpress.
Moving from the far reaches of the universe to a low Earth orbit, NASA
has announced a public competition to name a new module that will be
added to the International Space Station. Node 3 will hold a number of
the station's life support systems, and will be home to one of the
most fantastic places to view planet Earth—the work station cupola
consists of six windows that will look down onto the planet.
Node 3 is set to be delivered to the ISS aboard the shuttle Endeavor
during mission STS-130 this December. You can vote at NASA's
Name Node 3! site. In an attempt to follow in the naming
scheme of nodes 1 and 2, Unity and Harmony, NASA has
offered up four potential names: Earthrise, Legacy, Serenity (for the Firefly
fans, or not...), and Venture, but will let you add your own option. As of Friday, Serenity holds a commanding lead.
Voting is open until March 20th.
2009. DOI: 10.1126/science.1169101
Listing image by NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler