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00:04 Back in October 2022, astronomers detected the most powerful explosion ever recorded from deep space.
00:10 The event was so big it was nicknamed "Boat" for brightest of all time,
00:14 officially named GRB-221009A. At the time, the only thing experts could say for sure
00:20 was that the explosion was a massive release of gamma radiation some 2.4 billion light-years away.
00:26 Later, it was concluded it originated from the death of a star and the birth of a black hole.
00:31 Now, scientists say the evolving light has revealed something extremely surprising,
00:35 which is that the gamma-ray burst was actually extremely ordinary.
00:39 Astrophysicist Peter Blanchard had this to say about it,
00:42 "It looks fairly normal in the context of other supernovae associated with less
00:47 energetic gamma-ray bursts. You might expect that the same collapsing star producing a very
00:51 energetic and bright GRB would also produce a very energetic and bright supernova. But it
00:56 turns out that's not the case. Gamma-ray bursts are the most energetic of all cosmic radiation
01:01 events, releasing the same amount of energy in 10 seconds as our sun produces in 10 billion years."
01:07 Another surprise is that astronomers were not able to detect the heavy elements they expected
01:11 from a GRB of this magnitude, meaning our understanding of these elements' creation
01:16 is still incomplete.
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