Peering 5,000 light years away into space, MSU researchers made a first-of-its-kind discovery.
Gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light in our universe, were found emitting from an explosion on a star by a research team led by MSU astronomy assistant professor Laura Chomiuk.
The team’s findings appeared in the most recent edition of the science journal Nature.
The explosions, called novae, were not believed to be capable of producing gamma rays. But after using both gamma ray and radio telescopes to examine a nova 5,000 light years away, Chomiuk said they saw evidence of gamma rays, which were “totally unexpected.”
“Novae are really common nuclear explosions,” Chomiuk said. “They’re supposed to be relatively innocuous and low-energy, but we picked up signs of the highest energy type of light, which are gamma rays.”
What fascinates astronomers about the presence of gamma rays is the immense amount of energy it takes to create them, said MSU researcher Justin Linford, who helped co-author the study.
“Any really high-energy explosion requires special processes to happen,” he said. “It usually involves something very explosive or powerful. That kind of puts it into the realm of ‘interesting by default’ for us scientists.”
These powerful emissions had never before been detected from within a nova, which both Chomiuk and Linford said were not thought to be volatile enough to create such high-energy results.
“If you talked to somebody 10 years ago, 90 percent of the people with a science background would have told you that novae aren’t that interesting and we already know everything about them,” Linford said. “But the more we study these things, the more we come to realize that there is no such thing as a ‘regular’ nova. There’s always something weird going on.”
Chomiuk said she hopes her study will spur the science community to search for other possible origins of gamma rays that, like novae, were previously not considered to be capable of producing the high-energy wavelengths of light.
“We don’t really know where gamma rays come from and we still don’t really understand how they are created,” Chomiuk said. “This is just one step that will hopefully help us answer some of these questions.”
