Astronomers have uncovered the mystery behind isolated, brilliant gamma-ray bursts: These monstrous objects belong to ghost galaxies from 10 billion years ago.
According to Space, the cause of the explosion is a neutron star, a “monstrous” type of object in the universe, possessing energy so powerful that it is catastrophic and is essentially a “zombie.” They are formed when a massive star exhausts its energy and collapses into a small but extremely powerful entity.
Graphic depicting an ancient neutron star explosion – (Image: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA).
Somewhere in the “ghost galaxies” – extremely faint galaxies, transparent due to a lack of stars, several neutron stars have merged. The energy from these collisions is so intense that it tears through space, reaching Earth 10 billion years later.
This seemingly fictional process has been validated by a team of international astronomers, using some of the most powerful ground and space telescopes, including Gemini North (located in Hawaii) and Gemini South (located in Chile), to trace the origins of these isolated, mysterious light bursts that have puzzled scientists for a long time.
“Many short gamma-ray bursts have been found in relatively nearby bright galaxies, but some appear to have no corresponding ‘home’” – said astronomer Brendan O’Connor from the University of Maryland and George Washington University.
This unique discovery could spark a massive review of astronomical data, tracing similar “intergalactic monsters” to uncover evidence of ancient, extremely faint galaxies, whose images we are seeing are from billions of years ago, as light takes that long to travel to Earth.
