GRB 090423 goes Supernova in a galaxy, far, far away.

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CNN published a story today titled “Exploding star is oldest object seen in universe”. A scientist named Edo Berger , currently at Harvard, detected a huge increase of gamma rays coming from deep space.  Further investigation by Berger confirmed that the gamma rays were coming from an exploded star, about 13 billion light years away.

Put in another way, this star exploded 13 billion years ago, and because of its great distance from us, we here on Earth are just finding out about it now.

As far as we know, the Universe is only 13.6 billion years old, so Berger’s observations are of an event that occurred when the universe, or even time as we know it, was only 600 million years old.  His observation broke the previous “earliest observed event record” by 200 million years.

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Some aspects of the CNN story were confusing. In one part of the story they seemed to say that the gamma rays from the explosion and the light produced by the explosion were going to reach Earth at separate times.  Even to a lay person like Paulano, this did not seem right.  Later in the story, CNN stated that there was never a time when Berger detected visible light, and alluded to that being significant, but never said why.   And finally, the CNN story did not identify specifically what it was in Berger’s observations made that allowed him to determine the age of what he was looking at.

What is CNN talking about? Question other sources to find out.

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I looked around, and found two things (which I presume are reliable) to help clarify.  First was a blog by “The Planetologist”, which quoted the CNN article with regard gamma rays and light arriving at two separate times.

“Telescopes around the world swiveled to focus on the explosion, soon picking up infrared radiation, which travels more slowly than gamma rays. Berger waited for the visible light which he expected to come next.“

“The Planetologist” then had the following response:

“In brief, all electromagnetic radiation (which includes light) always travels at the local velocity of light at all times and everywhere. What that article tried to say was that the first bright flash that happens during a massive supernova is brightest in the gamma ray region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The gamma blast reaches a catastrophic peak of searing [thermal] intensity, then proceeds to cool through the gamma and X-ray bands, then passes through a temperature range where visible light shines, then finally dims to emit infrared light for a long, long time.“

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As CNN stated, Berger never experienced the visible light phase.  The Planetologist conjectured that the dimming of visible light is something that simply occurs over distances in space.

So, taken by itself, Berger’s inability to observe visible light is simply a clue that suggests this event occurred very far way from Earth, but Berger probably already knew that.  My guess is that this part of the story was fairly unremarkable despite CNN suggestions to the contrary.

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With regard to my third issue about CNN failing to say what it was in Berger’s observations that allowed him to detemine age, I had to go to MSNBC, which had an implied explanation in their story “Space Explosion is farthest thing ever seen“.  According to the article, the ongoing expansion of the universe stretches all visible light into longer infrared wavelengths.  Apparently, the stretching is consistant enough so that it can be used as an age marker:  The longer the wavelengths of light, the further away and the older the celestial event is.

And based on the measurements that were made on wavelengths of this super-stretched infrared light coming from GRB 090423, Berger was apparently able to pinpoint an age of 13 Billion light years. Sounds good to me.

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As a side note, Paulano is currently reading a great book called “A Short History of Nearly Everything“.   In it, author Bill Bryson breifly discusses stars that go supernova, and whether there are any nearby stars, including our own sun, that could go supernova and cause “issues” (aka catastrophic destruction) here on Earth.

In short, the answer is yes.  I guess that’s the bad news.

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The good news is that our own sun is good for another few billion years at least, and there are only a handful of other stars that are even close enough to be a concern to us.  In addition, should any of those go supernova, the light from the blast and and the destructive radiation from the blast would reach us in the same instant, so, well, you know….  just make sure to drink that Brandy you have been saving for a special occasion sooner rather than later.

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