Latest news with #XRT200515
Saba Yemen
18-02-2025
- Science
- Saba Yemen
Powerful explosion in space from unknown object puzzles scientists
London - Saba: Scientists said they had detected a powerful explosion from a mysterious object in space, the source or nature of which is not yet known. According to the British newspaper The Independent, Scientists confirmed today that this explosion, named XRT 200515, may be the result of an unprecedented cosmic phenomenon or something that has never been seen before. In May 2020, a NASA space telescope was observing the remains of an exploding star in a nearby galaxy when it captured a rapid and powerful flash of X-rays. Since then, scientists have been trying to understand the source of this flash, which disappeared within seconds and remained unnoticed for years. This flash was discovered by analyzing more than 20 years of archival data collected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. Whatsapp Telegram Email Print
The Independent
17-02-2025
- Science
- The Independent
Scientists see powerful explosion from mysterious, unknown object in space
Scientists have seen a powerful explosion from a mysterious, unknown object in space. Researchers do not know where the bright flash came from. But they believe that it may be something entirely unknown or never seen before. In May 2020, a Nasa space telescope was observing the leftovers of an exploded star in a nearby galaxy. As it did, it captured a bright and extremely fast X-ray flash. Researchers do not know where it came from, or what object might have caused such a dramatic flash. It could be the first X-ray burster found in that Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, a flare coming out of a mysterious magnetar – or something else entirely, researchers said. The flash had disappeared within a few seconds and actually went unnoticed for years, according to the researchers who found it. It was detected within more than 20 years of archive data collected by Nasa's Chandra X-Ray Observatory. "Have you ever flipped through old photo albums and suddenly found something fascinating hidden in the background of a picture, no one had ever noticed before? Now imagine doing that on a cosmic scale," said lead researcher Steven Dillmann, a PhD student at Stanford University. "Using a novel machine learning approach, we looked back through over 20 years of archived observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and discovered a remarkable, powerful X-ray flash from an unknown object outside our own galaxy that had gone unnoticed for years within the vast Chandra archive – a true needle in the haystack event." The finding is reported in a new paper, 'Representation learning for time-domain high-energy astrophysics: Discovery of extragalactic fast X-ray transient XRT 200515', published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
