Victor Grippi – The Atomic Writer

NASA’s Gamma Large Area Space Telescope has been operational now for 40 days, and has already detected 12 strong gamma ray bursts!

What if: these 12 bursts are from a dying star, that creates a supernova, or from a pulsar, orbiting twin stars, or ?

OR What if: these could be newly formed black holes, how about the opening of one end of a wormhole, or an advanced communication medium…

The GLAST satellite may provide proof of hawking radiation, emitted from an evaporating black hole. We have detected GRB’s for years, but NASA’s new instrument will offer more data about these mysterious cosmic events.

The gamma-ray bursts were detected by the GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM), one of two instruments on the spacecraft.

“We are thrilled to be detecting gamma-ray bursts so early in the mission. GLAST and the GBM are off to a great start!” said Charles “Chip” Meegan, GBM principal investigator at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala. “The detectors are working well and we’re really pleased with how the instrument is working. That said, we’re using this checkout period to scrutinize the data coming down from the detectors and fine tune flight and ground software and our daily operational processes.”

Another part of the mission is the Gamma Ray Coordination Network. This system will report the GRB’s just seconds after detection to ground based systems. This will allow the event to be monitored by several instruments providing even greater study of the source and duration of these events.

Here is a graph of one of the detected bursts:

This graph depicts a gamma-ray burst captured by the GLAST Burst Monitor on July 23. This powerful burst lasted over 50 seconds and was captured by each of the instrument’s 14 detectors. Credit: NASA

“The whole team is really coming together and we’re in good shape to begin pouring over the 100 megabytes of data we’re receiving daily from the spacecraft.” said Meegan. “The most exciting part of the mission is still ahead when we, hopefully, begin to answer long-standing questions about how these fantastically powerful gamma-ray bursts are produced.”

Bookmark this site, and I will keep you informed with the latest information on the GLAST mission.

Until next time….

-Victor Grippi
The Atomic Writer
victor@atomicwriter.com