Friday, October 30, 2009

The Most Distant Object?

The Swift Gamma Ray Observatory was designed to catch GRB's "on the fly." Power source of these immense explosions has been considered a mystery. Light from GRB 090423 reached Earth on April 23. This Gamma Ray burst is estimated to have exploded 13 billion years ago, making it a candidate for the oldest object ever observed.

The most likely power source of GRB's is the explosion of gigantic black holes. Size of a primordial Black Hole is limited by a "horizon distance" within light's reach. These gigantic Gamma Ray bursters exploding near the beginning of time is one indicator that the speed of light was once mych larger.

Further observations from Swift indicate that photons travel at the same speed regardless of their energy--a gamma ray photon travels as fast as visible light. This shows that c is not related to photon energy, but the speed of light may have changed with time.

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5 Comments:

Anonymous Bjoern said...

Yoou said:
"The most likely power source of GRB's is the explosion of gigantic black holes."

Does this hypothesis describe the observed lightcurves of GRB's correctly?

7:56 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Actually, GRB's are thought to be a result of the formation of a supermassive black hole from a collapsing supernova, not the explosion of a black hole. I'm not sure how it would even be possible for a black hole to explode.

6:08 PM  
Blogger Lobo7922 said...

Dr. Riofrio should take a look to this:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=dark-matter-modified-gravity

They talk about a modified theory of gravity to explain the absence of Dark Matter.
Perhaps a varying speed of light could explain better?

9:45 AM  
Blogger L. Riofrio said...

Thank you, Lobo for a very interesting link!

4:05 AM  
Blogger Lobo7922 said...

Anytime :)

4:51 AM  

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