Almost a year ago to the day there was an incredibly energetic burst of light from a black hole residing billions of light-years away. Any other burst of its kind may have gone unnoticed by astronomers given its distance, but this one was not only noticed and it was literally felt on our planet.
00:00Almost a year ago to the day, there was an incredibly energetic burst of light from a black hole residing billions of light years away.
00:10Any other burst of its kind may have gone unnoticed by astronomers given its distance.
00:14But this one was not only noticed, it was literally felt on our planet.
00:18According to NASA, gamma ray bursts are the most powerful class of explosions in the universe.
00:23And GRB-221-009A, from 2.4 billion miles away, was the strongest one ever detected.
00:30Experts say it was so strong, they were actually able to measure its effects in Earth's upper atmosphere, detecting changes in the very electrical field there.
00:38With the researchers studying the phenomenon saying about it,
00:41Using both satellite observations and a new ad hoc developed analytical model,
00:45we proved that the GRB-221-009A deeply impacted on Earth's ionosphere conductivity,
00:51causing a strong perturbation not only in the bottom-side ionosphere, but also in the top-side ionosphere, at around 500 kilometers.
00:58Earth's ionosphere is a relatively thick layer of atmosphere, ranging from around 30 miles to around 600 miles up.
01:05It protects us from much of the cosmic radiation zipping around in space, including much of the harmful radiation from the sun.
01:11Still, the researchers say they were able to detect the gamma ray bursts in the lower ionosphere,
01:16where it had around the same impact as an exponentially closer solar flare.
