Researchers confirm brightest gamma-ray burst of all time from supernova - but where's the gold?

[muriel_volestrangler]

In October 2022, an international team of researchers, including Northwestern University astrophysicists, observed the brightest gamma-ray burst (GRB) ever recorded, GRB 221009A.

Now, a Northwestern-led team has confirmed that the phenomenon responsible for the historic burst—dubbed the B.O.A.T. ("brightest of all time" )—is the collapse and subsequent explosion of a massive star. The team discovered the explosion, or supernova, using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
...
"When we confirmed that the GRB was generated by the collapse of a massive star, that gave us the opportunity to test a hypothesis for how some of the heaviest elements in the universe are formed," said Northwestern's Peter Blanchard, who led the study.

"We did not see signatures of these heavy elements, suggesting that extremely energetic GRBs like the B.O.A.T. do not produce these elements. That doesn't mean that all GRBs do not produce them, but it's a key piece of information as we continue to understand where these heavy elements come from. Future observations with JWST will determine if the B.O.A.T.'s 'normal' cousins produce these elements."

https://phys.org/news/2024-04-brightest-gamma-ray-collapse-massive.html

The research is published in the journal Nature Astronomy, but that does not appear to be online yet.