The brightest ever gamma ray burst, visible by the naked eye, was observed on March 19th.
“If someone just happened to be looking at the right place at the right time, they saw the most distant object ever seen by human eyes without optical aid.”
The explosion took place at a distance of 7.5 billion light years from Earth, meaning 7.5 billion years ago, a time when the universe was less than half its current age and Earth had yet to form. This is more than halfway across the visible universe.
Most gamma ray bursts occur when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel. Their cores collapse to form black holes or neutron stars, releasing an intense burst of high-energy gamma rays and ejecting particle jets that rip through space at nearly the speed of light. When the jets plow into surrounding interstellar clouds, they heat the gas to incandescent visibility. It is this gaseous “afterglow” which was visible to the human eye on March 19th.
ceo