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.
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