Technology and science
March 20, 2023 at 11:56 am
Photo: NASA | What the universe might look like if humans could see gamma rays
Most of the light that passes through space cannot be seen by the human eye. But special technologies have been created for this.
Beyond the perception of our eyes is a huge part of the cosmos, which is amazing. Even though humans can’t see much of the light that travels through the universe, there is a way to see this “invisible cosmos”. For example, the Fermi space gamma-ray telescope helps scientists in this, which can see gamma rays in the Universe – this is the highest energy radiation known to us, writes ScienceAlert.
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The Fermi Space Telescope constantly monitors the cosmos, in particular gamma-ray sources, and helps scientists track their changes over time. So astronomers have created a map of gamma-ray sources, and a new animation shows what space might look like if people could see gamma rays.
The Fermi Space Telescope constantly monitors the cosmos, in particular gamma-ray sources, and helps scientists track their changes over time. So astronomers have created a map of gamma-ray sources, and a new animation shows what space might look like if people could see gamma rays.
Photo: NASA
The new animation contains 1525 sources of gamma radiation, which are represented by pulsating bright circles of different sizes. The larger this circle, the stronger the gamma radiation. The video also shows the movement of the Sun over the same observation period, which is represented as a yellow circle. This data was collected by the space telescope between February 2022 and February 2023.
Most of the pulsing circles in the animation, which are sources of gamma radiation, are in blazars, a type of quasar, according to NASA’s Daniel Kotsevsky. Quasars are called galaxies with a very active core, which means that the supermassive black hole at their center absorbs the surrounding matter at a tremendous speed. This substance heats up and emits very bright light. Therefore, quasars are considered the brightest objects in the universe.
From the centers of some quasars huge jets of plasma fly out, the speed of which reaches almost the speed of light. So a blazar is considered a quasar, the jet from which is directed towards the Earth or its environs. Because of this, the radiation seems even brighter and even stronger.
Blazars are considered the best known sources of gamma rays, but their light changes over fairly short periods of time, and these fluctuations can help astronomers understand what is happening at the center of the active nuclei of these galaxies. Scientists also believe that the recently discovered neutrino particles flew to Earth from blazars.
In the new animation, more than 90% of the gamma-ray sources are blazars. Other objects are a variety of neutron stars called pulsars and binary neutron stars. A neutron star appears as a result of the death of a giant ordinary star.
Also on the video you can see the orange band, which is located in the center – this is the gamma radiation of the plane of the Milky Way. The lighter the section of this band, the stronger the gamma radiation.
Focus already wrote about the five asteroids that have a real chance of crashing into the Earth, but this may not happen in the very near future.
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