By Amigo News Staff
🚀 China's Einstein Probe (EP) satellite just made history! For the first time ever, it detected soft X-ray signals from an explosion in the early universe—talk about a cosmic throwback! 🌌✨
On March 15, 2024, the EP's Wide-field X-ray Telescope picked up a faint pulse signal from a burst event in the soft X-ray band. Dubbed EP240315a, this mysterious burst flashed with rapid brightness fluctuations and hung around for over 17 minutes before fading into the cosmic background.
Here's the mind-blowing part: By the time this burst reached Earth, it had been traveling for a whopping 12.5 billion years! 😱 That means the universe was only 10% of its current age when EP240315a happened. It's like looking back in time to the universe's baby photos! 🍼🌠
Soft X-rays are lower-energy X-rays (as opposed to the \"hard\" ones), and catching them from so long ago is a first for humanity. This epic discovery shows just how awesome the EP satellite is at spotting ancient cosmic events.
\"This is just the beginning,\" said Yuan Weimin, principal investigator of the EP mission and researcher at the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). \"The EP has remarkable potential to detect cosmic explosions from the early universe.\"
The excitement doesn't stop there! 🌟 The EP team teamed up with Dr. Roberto Ricci from the University of Rome Tor Vergata in Italy. He kicked off a long-term radio band monitoring of this gamma-ray burst (GRB). Using the Australia Telescope Compact Array, Dr. Ricci's three-month radio observations confirmed that EP240315a's energy output matches that of a GRB—one of the most powerful explosions in the universe! 💥
A fun science fact: GRBs usually come from the explosion of massive stars and are among the universe's most energetic events. Further analysis showed that EP240315a is linked to GRB240315C.
\"These results show that a substantial fraction of fast X-ray transients (FXRTs) may be associated with GRBs,\" said Dr. Ricci. \"Sensitive X-ray monitors like the EP can pinpoint them in the distant universe. Combining X-ray and radio observations gives us a new way to explore these ancient explosions—even without detecting their gamma rays.\"
But wait, there's a twist! 🌀 The GRB discovered by the EP is unique. Normally, X-rays appear just tens of seconds before gamma rays. However, with EP240315a, the X-rays arrived more than six minutes earlier! ⏱️
\"Such a long delay has never been observed before,\" said Sun Hui, associate researcher at the National Astronomical Observatories of CAS and co-first author of the study.
Gao He, co-corresponding author from Beijing Normal University, added that this discovery offers a fresh perspective and could lead scientists to rethink existing GRB models.
This monumental find, published in Nature Astronomy, opens up exciting new avenues to explore the early universe. Who knows what other cosmic secrets are waiting to be uncovered? 🌠🔭 Stay tuned, space enthusiasts!
Reference(s):
China's astronomical satellite detected explosion from early universe
cgtn.com
