Space
We Just Saw an ‘Extraordinary’ Millennium Space Explosion

A record-breaking gamma-ray burst detected in October 2022 has now been described as a once-in-a-thousand-year event.
It’s called GRB 221009A, and with up to 18 teraelectronvolts of energy packed into its light emissions, it’s considered the most powerful gamma-ray burst ever recorded.
We’ve been waiting to learn more about this incredible explosion, and now the analyses have begun to arrive on the preprint server arXiv, with a trio of papers submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
According to the analyses, this extraordinary burst breaks the rules: the light curve of its afterglow doesn’t fit neatly into theoretical descriptions of how it should go, suggesting that there’s something interesting and unique about GRB 221009A.
To recap, gamma-ray bursts are the most violent explosions in the universe, erupting in fire and fury so powerful that they release more energy than the sun would in 10 billion years. The bursts of electromagnetic radiation are caused by cataclysmic events: the supernova or hypernova explosions of massive stars at the end of their lives, or the collision of binary systems containing at least one neutron star.
GRB 221009A was first detected on October 9, 2022, and was initially thought to be a low-power X-ray flash from a relatively nearby source. However, follow-up observations revealed that the flash came from much farther away than first thought – 2.4 billion light-years (which still makes it one of the closest gamma-ray bursts ever detected) – meaning that it was also much more powerful than first thought.
For the first 73 days after the initial discovery, astronomers watched it eagerly, tracking the evolution of its light curve, the shape the intensity of the light makes on a graph over time. They had to stop after about 70 days as the afterglow moved behind the Sun, but it is expected to reappear around now.
Light echoes from the gamma-ray burst, produced by the light traveling through thick dust as it moves towards us, creating an “expanding ring” effect. (Williams et al., arXiv, 2023)
In a paper led by Maia Williams of Pennsylvania State University, a team of astronomers found that the X-ray afterglow of GRB 221009A immediately after the burst was the brightest ever detected by the Swift observatory, by an order of magnitude. In a simulation of randomly generated bursts, only one in 10,000 was as powerful as GRB 221009A.
When distance was taken into account, the brightness of GRB 221009A was consistent with other gamma-ray bursts in the Swift catalog. Others simply appear dimmer because they’re farther away. According to the team’s calculations, it’s the combined characteristics of GRB 221009A that make it very rare indeed.
“We estimate,” they write, “that GRBs as energetic and nearby as GRB 221009A occur at a rate of ≲1 per 1000 yr – making this a truly remarkable opportunity that is unlikely to be repeated in our lifetimes.”
What makes the GRB truly peculiar is the evolution of the afterglow, which doesn’t fit the standard theory. Gamma-ray bursts are typically followed by a glow from electrons traveling at near-light speeds. This is called synchrotron emission, and it’s the result of the shocks that form as the initial explosion slams into the interstellar medium.
The gamma-ray bursts themselves are thought to consist of energy concentrated in parallel beams that form highly collimated jets. Studying the resulting synchrotron emission can help astronomers figure out the shape of the explosion and the jets.
According to Williams and her team, the afterglow suggests that either the jet structure of GRB 221009A is more complicated than expected, or it’s not tightly collimated. The latter scenario, they say, will have profound implications for the energy budget of the event.
In another paper, led by Tanmoy Laskar of the University of Utah, a team of astronomers suggests that the peculiar afterglow could mean that there’s an additional source of synchrotron emission in the gamma-ray burst’s afterglow, but the implications could be more serious. The problem, they suggest, may be something fundamentally wrong with the theory of synchrotron afterglows.
And a third paper, led by astronomer Manisha Shrestha of the University of Arizona, finds that the afterglow doesn’t contain some of the features you’d expect to see in a supernova explosion. This, they note, could mean that most of GRB 221009A’s energy budget was spent on the jets, leaving very little to suggest that an exploding star was responsible.
The afterglow is expected to re-emerge from behind the Sun this month, and should still be very visible to our telescopes at several wavelengths. Whatever is going on with this strange explosion, astronomers will be working very hard to get to the bottom of it.
The research papers have all been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters, and are available on preprint server arXiv. They can be found here, here, and here.
Space
Former US Air Force fighter pilot: UFOs use Star Trek-style warp drive

A former US Air Force fighter pilot asserts that he has deciphered
the method behind the extraordinary maneuvers of UFOs, reports dailystar.co.uk.
Over
the past two decades, numerous military encounters with these enigmatic
crafts have been reported, prompting a significant investigation by the
Pentagon.
One of the most renowned sightings occurred during the
USS Nimitz encounter, where fighter pilots witnessed a UFO descending
from 28,000 feet to just above sea level in less than a second.
This
astonishing movement would imply that the craft reached a staggering
speed of 19,000 miles per hour, a velocity that would be fatal to any
human pilot.
According
to Chris Lehto, a former USAF pilot, the craft exhibits two key
characteristics: it moves without inertia, essentially lacking weight,
and it accelerates at an incredibly rapid pace without affecting its
surroundings.
Image: NATO Allied Air Command/Facebook
Chris
believes that the explanation lies within a technology that seems
straight out of science fiction. He proposes that the answer to the UFO
enigma lies in the Alcubierre Drive, a theoretical interstellar engine
conceptualized by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994.
The
Alcubierre Drive employs a form of “space warp” technology, reminiscent
of what has been depicted in episodes of Star Trek. By bending space, a
craft inside a “warp bubble” could potentially travel at or even
surpass the speed of light without violating the known laws of physics.
While
the Alcubierre Drive remains a hypothetical concept with challenges to
overcome, Chris notes that the required energy is no longer believed to
be unattainably large.
Patents
filed with the US patent office outline the potential workings of the
drive, as well as another groundbreaking technology theorized by
American aerospace engineer Salvatore Pais.
Pais suggests that
high-powered rotating magnets could theoretically eliminate an object’s
inertia, and he has filed a patent for a starship based on this
principle.
However, Chris maintains skepticism regarding Pais’
theory. He explains that while Pais’s patent applications for the US
Navy attracted attention for their potential energy-related
applications, doubts have been raised about their feasibility. There is
speculation that they may be scams, pseudoscience, or disinformation
intended to mislead adversaries of the United States.
Alternatively,
rival theories propose that the “Tic Tac” UFO is a classified Pentagon
project testing similar advanced technologies discussed by Chris.
Space
A Mysterious Earth-Like Planet Has Just Appeared in Our Solar System, Scientists Say

Scientists say they have found evidence of a new Earth-like
planet that has suddenly appeared in our Solar System and is orbiting
the Sun.
Physicists, including those from the National Astronomical Observatory
of Japan, said the planet is likely to be the mysterious ‘Planet Nine’
that was hypothesised to exist in the far outer edges of the Solar
System.
Several studies in the past have suggested there is likely an
undiscovered planet beyond the Kuiper Belt – a stellar disk of materials
such as asteroids, space rocks, comets around the Sun in the outer
Solar System past the orbit of Neptune.
Independent.co.uk reports: In the new research, published recently in The Astronomical Journal, scientists
found that some of the objects in the Kuiper Belt behave in a way
indicative of the presence of a small planet among them.
One such object, they said, is about 500 astronomical units (AU) from
the Sun, where 1 AU is the distance between the Sun and the Earth.
In comparison Neptune is at a distance of 30 AUs from the Sun.
Some of these were also found to have “odd” orbits suggesting they
are being pull by the gravity of a cosmic entity larger than those that
typically influence such objects.
Computer simulations run by the scientists indicate that the most
likely explanation for the observations was another hidden planet in the
Kuiper Belt.
“We predict the existence of an Earth-like planet,” researchers wrote in the study.
“It is plausible that a primordial planetary body could survive in
the distant Kuiper Belt as a Kuiper Belt planet (KBP), as many such
bodies existed in the early solar system,” they added.
If such a planet exists, researchers say it would have a mass about
1.5 to 3 times that of Earth with an inclination of about 30 degrees.
They say the theorised planet’s orbit would likely place it between 250 and 500 AU from the Sun.
Researchers say the discovery of such a planet close to the Kuiper
Belt can unravel new constraints on planet formation and evolution.
“In conclusion, the results of the KBP scenario support the existence
of a yet-undiscovered planet in the far outer solar system,” scientists
noted.
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