11 Billion Year Old Blast Observed

It is difficult to wrap one’s mind around an event like this. Can you imagine observing an event that has occurred long ago in the past? How about witnessing something that occurred 11 billion years ago, a time when even our solar system was not yet formed?

Given the unimaginably vast distances in space, such incidents are possible, although they are rare. Early in 2009, initiating what has been declared as the International Year of Astronomy, astronomers at the University of Western Australia have borne witness to a gamma ray burst that actually occurred 11 billion years ago. However, it happened at a location so far away in space from our own galaxy that it took the light from the explosion 11 billion years to travel the distance between its location and the earth.

Unfortunately, on the night that this incident occurred, the astronomy department faced a tragic computer crash and did not have access to the right equipment to record this fantastic event. This event was eventually recorded on a regular video camera owned by one of the staff members. This recording precedes the visibility of this incident from the European Southern Observatory, which houses the most expensive and biggest telescopes in the world. The event was captured by the Zadko Telescope, which is linked to a global network of telescopes in direct communication with NASA’s Swift satellite ground station. It was because of this global network that NASA was able to help direct the Zadko Telescope to the sky-positions of gamma ray bursts.

The explosion in question was more than a billion time greater in intensity when compared to the sun in our own solar system. If such an explosion were to occur in our Milky Way galaxy, or even in our neighboring galaxy, for instance in the Andromeda galaxy, it could have resulted in the extinction of most species on the surface of the earth.