April 10, 2015
Cosmic debris: Study looks inside the universe's most powerful explosions
A new study provides an inside look at the most powerful explosions in the universe: gamma-ray bursts. These rare explosions happen when extremely massive stars go supernova. The stars' strong magnetic fields channel most of the explosion's energy into two powerful plasma jets, one at each magnetic pole. The jets spray energetic particles for light-years in both directions, at close to light speed.
Mauricio Bustamante, a Fellow of the Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics at Ohio State, explained that the new computer model is a natural outgrowth of recent findings in astroparticle physics, such as the first confirmed cosmic neutrinos detected at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole in 2013.