Scientists have made a detailed inventory of galaxies that are firing mysterious, intense bursts known as short gamma-ray bursts, or SGRBs.
Moreover, the new study found that an even greater number of explosions were coming from the distant universe, when it was much smaller than we previously realized, as scientists found that the galaxies that released this energy appeared to be young and still forming stars.
The researchers also discovered that many of the SGRB galaxies were coming from outside their host galaxies, as if they were discarded from their former host galaxies. Scientists aren’t sure how they managed to travel so far from their own galaxies.
The new findings come from the largest-ever catalog of galaxies, which includes 84 galaxies in all, and the scientists behind them hope it will allow them to understand the largely mysterious bursts of energy that seem to arise when two neutron stars collide with each other.
The explosions are among the brightest in the universe, and although gamma rays only last for seconds after the explosion, the afterglow or afterglow released in the collision can last for hours, allowing scientists to watch them.
Rare energy
But they are rare, with only a few being discovered and found each year. As such, building a catalog of a sufficient number of SGRB host galaxies could be very useful to scientists hoping to study them.
Cataloging these rare events is a way for scientists to study neutron star mergers, and even after years of study, it’s still not clear which galaxies will kick them out, and the mechanisms that lead to their emergence.
The results of the first studies using the catalog have been published in two papers in The Astrophysical Journal, with one suggesting that SGRBs come from earlier times in the universe than scientists have previously released, farther from the centers of their galaxies — while the other suggests they are much younger than previously realized.
Previously, scientists believed that SGRB galaxies were mostly old and near death. However, the new study found that about 85 percent of them are young galaxies, indicating that neutron stars can form in a wide range of different environments.
The researchers behind the new catalog hope it will also be useful in understanding both SGRBs and the galaxies that host them, and as scientists discover more about explosions – including witnessing neutron star mergers through gravitational-wave detectors – the catalog should prove to be a useful reference point for better understanding singles. .