Since the 1960’s, astronomers using radio telescopes have detected bursts of high energy light called Gamma Rays, coming from points well beyond our galaxy. And although they represent the greatest known source of energy in the universe, we have very little idea of where Gamma Rays come from. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History. The sounds we’re listening to are actual Gamma Ray burst events which have been translated into musical tones. The higher the pitch, the higher the intensity of Gamma Rays.
Dr. Neil de Grasse Tyson is Frederick P. Rose Director of New York’s Hayden Planetarium.
“In astro physics when you’re confronted with a problem of explaining something, what you first do is look for the gross properties of the object. Gamma Ray bursts give off ten to the fifty-three ergs of energy. Trust me, that’s a whole lot of energy. And what you first do is say, “Well let’s not come up with a detailed model for that yet. Let’s just look around the universe and ask ourselves, is there anything out there that’s remotely capable of producing that much energy in a short amount of time?”. And, armed with that challenge some people came up with some interesting possibilities. One of them is, you have a neutron star which is the N stage of a high mass star that has blown up as a supernova and spread its guts all over the galaxy. But it leaves behind this dense ball of neutrons we call neutron stars. If you have two of those, in orbit around each other, and the orbit decays and then they start spiraling in. If they spiral into each other and collide they will give off as much energy in a short amount of time as you might expect in a Gamma Ray burst. Now this would be a very rare phenomenon, but in fact if the Gamma Rays come from all over the universe, they’re actually a pretty rare phenomenon themselves.”
Pulse of the Planet is presented by the American Museum of Natural History. I’m Jim Metzner.