Biggest cosmic explosions also may propel fastest objects in universe

Contacts: Nancy Ambrosiano, nwa@lanl.gov, (505) 667-0471 (03-106)
Jim Danneskiold, jdanneskiold@lanl.gov, (505) 667-1640

Recent News Los Alamos scientist named Asian American Engineer of the Year Los Alamos scientist featured in NASA science update Los Alamos muon detector could thwart nuclear smugglers Wojciech H. Zurek named Phi Beta Kappa visiting scholar Four Los Alamos physicists honored by American Physical Society Los Alamos National Laboratory organizations earn seven out of 13 NNSA Pollution Prevention awards Carter Hydrick returns to the Bradbury Science Museum Feb. 15 Laboratory supports summer science program New NASA IBEX mission to carry Los Alamos instrument Beason takes top threat reduction post at Los Alamos

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Aug. 13, 2003 -- The most powerful explosions in the universe, gamma-ray bursts, may generate the most energetic particles in the universe, known as ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs), according to a new analysis of observations from NASA's Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory.

Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers and their colleagues from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington and the University of Alabama at Huntsville report in the Aug. 14 edition of Nature of a newly identified pattern in the light from these enigmatic bursts that could be explained by protons moving within a hair's breadth of light speed.

These protons, like shrapnel from an explosion, could be UHECRs. Such cosmic rays are rare and constitute an enduring mystery in astrophysics, seemingly defying physical explanation, for they are simply far too energetic to have been generated by well-known mechanisms such as supernova explosions.

"Cosmic rays 'forget' where they come from because, unlike light, they are whipped about in space by magnetic fields," said lead author Maria Magdalena Gonzalez of Los Alamos' Neutron Science and Technology Group and a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin. "This result is an exciting chance to possibly see evidence of them being produced at their source."

Gamma-ray bursts -- a mystery scientists are finally beginning to unravel -- can shine as brilliantly as a million trillion suns, and many may be from an unusually powerful type of exploding star. The bursts are common yet random and fleeting, lasting only seconds.

Cosmic rays are atomic particles (for example, electrons, protons or neutrinos) moving close to light speed. Lower-energy cosmic rays bombard the Earth constantly, propelled by solar flares and typical star explosions. UHECRs are a hundred-million times more energetic than the particles produced in the largest human-made particle accelerators.

Scientists say the UHECRs must be generated relatively close to the Earth, for any particle traveling farther than 100 million light years would lose some of its energy by the time it reached us. Yet no local source of ordinary cosmic rays seems powerful enough to generate a UHECR.

The Gonzalez-led paper focuses not specifically on UHECR production but rather a new pattern of light seen in a gamma-ray burst. Digging deep into the Compton Observatory archives (the mission ended in 2000), the group found that a gamma-ray burst from 1994, named GRB941017, appears different from the other 2,700-some bursts recorded by the Compton Observatory. This burst was located in the direction of the constellation Sagitta, the Arrow, likely 10 billion light years away.

What scientists call gamma rays are photons (light particles) covering a wide range of energies, in fact, more than a million times wider than the energies our eyes register as the colors in a rainbow. Gonzalez's group looked at the higher-energy gamma-ray photons. The scientists found that these types of photons dominated the burst: They were at least three times more powerful on average than the lower-energy component yet, surprisingly, thousands of times more powerful after about 100 seconds.

That is, while the flow of lower-energy photons hitting the satellite's detectors began to ease, the flow of higher-energy photons remained steady. The finding is inconsistent with the popular "synchrotron shock model" describing most bursts. So what could explain this enrichment of higher-energy photons?

"One explanation is that ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays are responsible, but exactly how they create the gamma rays with the energy patterns we saw needs a lot of calculating," said Brenda Dingus of Los Alamos, a co-author on the paper. "We'll be keeping some theorists busy trying to figure this out."

A delayed injection of ultrahigh-energy electrons provides another way to explain the unexpectedly large high-energy gamma-ray flow observed in GRB 941017. But this explanation would require a revision of the standard burst model, said co-author Charles Dermer, a theoretical astrophysicist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington.

"In either case, this result reveals a new process occurring in gamma-ray bursts," Dermer said.

Gamma-ray bursts have not been detected originating within 100 million light years from Earth, but through the eons these types of explosions may have occurred locally. If so, Dingus said, the mechanism her group saw in GRB941017 could have been duplicated close to home, close enough to supply the UHECRs we see today.

Other bursts in the Compton Observatory archive may have exhibited a similar pattern, but the data are not conclusive. NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2006, will have detectors powerful enough to resolve higher-energy gamma-ray photons and solve this mystery.

The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory was the second of NASA's Great Observatories and the gamma-ray equivalent to the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Compton was launched aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis in April 1991, and at 17 tons, was the largest astrophysical payload ever flown at that time. At the end of its pioneering mission, Compton was deorbited and re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on June 4, 2000.

Co-authors of the Nature report also include Ph.D. graduate student Yuki Kaneko, Dr. Robert Preece, and Dr. Michael Briggs of the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The research was funded by NASA and the Office of Naval Research. Los Alamos work was funded through the Laboratory Directed Research and Development program.

More information is available from the NASA World Wide Web site at http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/0814cgro_ray.html online.

Los Alamos National Laboratory is operated by the University of California for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) of the U.S. Department of Energy and works in partnership with NNSA's Sandia and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories to support NNSA in its mission.

Los Alamos develops and applies science and technology to ensure the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent; reduce the threat of weapons of mass destruction, proliferation and terrorism; and solve national problems in defense, energy, environment and infrastructure.

Additional news releases from the Physics (P) Division