China’s Satellite Spots Cosmic Explosion from the Early Universe! 🌌
Hey there, space enthusiasts! Guess what? China’s Einstein Probe (EP) satellite has made an amazing discovery! 🚀 It found special signals called soft X-rays from a gigantic explosion that happened billions of years ago, way back when the universe was still super young! Isn’t that cool? 🤩
On March 15, 2024, the EP satellite noticed a faint, pulsing signal that lasted over 17 minutes before fading away. Scientists named this mysterious burst EP240315a. After checking with other telescopes around the world, they found out that this burst came from the early universe. That means the light we saw traveled for 12.5 billion years to reach us! 🌠
You might be wondering, what’s a soft X-ray? Well, X-rays are like super-powered light rays that we can’t see with our eyes. “Soft” X-rays have lower energy compared to “hard” X-rays. Discovering these soft X-rays from so long ago helps scientists learn more about how the universe began. 🧐
This discovery shows how awesome the EP satellite is at finding cosmic explosions from way back in time. Yuan Weimin, the head scientist of the EP mission, said it’s just the beginning of many more exciting finds! 🎉
But wait, there’s more! Scientists from Italy joined in to study this burst even further. Using a telescope in Australia, Dr. Roberto Ricci and his team observed EP240315a for three months. They found out that its energy matches something called a Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB). GRBs are like the biggest explosions in space, usually happening when huge stars blow up! 💥
However, there’s a mystery! Usually, X-rays appear just seconds before gamma rays, but with EP240315a, the X-rays showed up more than six minutes earlier. That’s never been seen before! 😮 Scientist Sun Hui said this strange delay has them scratching their heads, and Gao He from Beijing Normal University thinks this could help us rethink how GRBs work.
Isn’t space full of surprises? Who knows what other secrets are waiting for us out there! Keep looking up, future astronauts! 🌟
Reference(s):
China's astronomical satellite detected explosion from early universe
cgtn.com
