The Fermi gamma-ray telescope, an orbiting observatory designed and manufactured by researchers at Stanford University and SLAC, has captured the most massive, fastest and highest energy gamma-ray burst yet. Sciencexpress published information about the observation in the February 19 issue.
While it erupted more than 12.2 billion light years away, the blast was detectable by scientists due to its sheer power, which was that of nearly 9,000 ordinary supernovae.
The Fermi telescope has been busy gathering observations that give scientists better insight into the origin of gamma rays in the universe.
“Prior to Fermi, we had detected only a handful of gamma-ray pulsars and now we have a big population,” said Roger Romani, a Fermi team member and physics professor at Stanford. “This demonstrates that the few we found were not just weird exceptions–they’re fundamentally part of the way things work.”
The Fermi gamma-ray space telescope is a partnership between NASA, the US DOE and academic institutions in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the United States.
