Whenever you mean you recognize something , Mother Nature is quick to throw you a curve musket ball . Take , for example , gamma - ray flare-up – brief flash of the most knock-down spark in the universe . The short - duration I are created in the kilonova produced bythe coming together of compact objectssuch as neutron wiz . The tenacious - duration one are instead created by supernovae . So , imagine the surprise of astronomers get word a kilonova creating a long - duration gamma - ray burst .

This " oddball " issue is known as GRB   211211A and it originates from 1.3 billion tripping - days away . unlike teams observed the same events with two telescope , the Fermi Gamma - re Space Telescope and the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory , and all come in to the same ratiocination that the over-50 - second - long event was create by a kilonova .

“ We astonishingly visualize a kilonova . I say amazingly because we saw hundreds if not 1000 of longsighted Vasco da Gamma - ray volley , and every time we see one there was a supernova follow them , ” lead author Dr Eleonora Troja from the Università di Roma Tor Vergata , told IFLScience . “ This is a well - established knowledge . We thought we had figured out the explanation for long - continuance gamma - ray bursts . ”

“ This metre we did n’t find any supernovae . And we looked with the most powerful telescopes in the worldly concern , including the Hubble Space Telescope ; but did not find any sign of a supernova . Instead , we find a kilonova , ” Dr Troja excuse .

So alternatively of the death of a star at least 10 times the mass of the Sun , the investigator establish evidence of aneutron star mergingwith either another neutron star or with a stellar - sized shameful hole . The catastrophic hit shred the neutron principal apart , releasing an incredible amount of get-up-and-go as a kilonova . Something that had not been regard before for sure .

There has been a previous detection of a supernova - less long - continuance gamma - light beam burst , but astronomers did not discover a kilonova behind that one . This late detection , and the relative vicinity of the event , has let us a more detailed reason of the process . However , the researchers remain unsure on the button how kilonovae can produce a long - duration gamma - ray burst .

“ We are still go back from the shock , ” Dr Troja said laughingly to IFLScience . “ What we hump is that in most slip , neutron mavin hit can bring forth a gamma - beam outburst of forgetful continuance , less than two seconds longsighted . This event taught us that in some cases they can create da Gamma - ray fusillade of long duration . ”

Kilonovae are also the site of formation for some of the heaviest chemical element in the world , such as gold and platinum , so this breakthrough have in mind that long da Gamma - ray burst can be used to learn those environs in the grammatical case of kilonovae .

The analysis of this find was published in four composition in Nature , here , here , here , andhere , and one inNature Astronomy .