A team of Chinese researchers has found a giant bubble of ultra-high-energy gamma rays in the Cygnus region of the Milky Way, which reveals the origin of the most energetic cosmic rays ever detected.

In the heart of our Milky Way galaxy, two gigantic "bubbles" extend roughly 50,000 light-years above and below the galactic ...

Was a powerful cosmic explosion seen by the Einstein Probe launched by a supermassive black hole snacking on a star, by a ...

Jamie Carter is an award-winning reporter who covers the night sky. A massive burst of gamma rays produced by the explosion of a star almost two billion light-years away was so powerful that it ...

"The gamma-ray burst traveled through intergalactic space at the speed of light for eleven billion years, during which time the Sun and the planets were born." — Timothy Ferris, in the film ...

More information: R. Alfaro et al, Ultra-high-energy gamma-ray bubble around microquasar V4641 Sgr, Nature (2024). DOI: ...

It does this by emitting a high energy electromagnetic wave called a gamma ray. Gamma radiation does not consist of particles but as short wavelength, high energy electromagnetic radiation emitted ...

The highly energetic explosion was initially attributed to a burst of gamma rays emitted either by the collision of two neutron stars or from the death of a massive star. Soon, however ...