Physics: Principles and Problems

Chapter 26: Electromagnetism

Problem of the Week

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Cold War to Serendipitous Science
On August 5, 1963, the U.S. and the USSR signed the first significant treaty to limit nuclear weapons, the Limited Test Ban Treaty. Two months later in an effort to monitor compliance with the treaty, the Department of Defense launched the first Vela satellite able to detect electromagnetic radiation given off by atmospheric or space-based nuclear tests. In 1969, the detectors on board the Vela 5 spacecraft discovered enormous bursts of energy in the frequency range of light called gamma. The military's Vela satellite had unexpectedly detected the most powerful explosions in space, dwarfing supernovas in energy output. Scientists scrambled to explain this new astronomical phenomenon.
For about one to two seconds, a gamma-ray burst can be as luminous as all the rest of the entire universe.

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Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRB)
<a onClick="window.open('/olcweb/cgi/pluginpop.cgi?it=gif::::/sites/dl/free/0078458137/193800/ch26_vela_sm.gif','popWin', 'width=NaN,height=NaN,resizable,scrollbars');" href="#"><img valign="absmiddle" height="16" width="16" border="0" src="/olcweb/styles/shared/linkicons/image.gif"> (15.0K)</a> As of 1998, scientist can still only speculate on the origin of these spasmodic, random, energy bursts. A burst detected on Dec. 14, 1997 was so powerful that in a few brief seconds, it released more energy than the combined output of over 10 trillion stars. The burst, GRB 971214, originated at a distance of 12 billion light years from Earth. Gamma-ray bursts are extremely short lived, lasting from seconds to minutes. However, they do continue to emit less energetic radiation for days afterward. The presence of this afterglow provides an opportunity for scientist to look for the source of a GRB. Is the source a black hole, a supernova, a neutron star...? Theorists are still speculating about the intriguing phenomena of GRBs.
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