NASA scientists catch a glimpse of gamma rays older than Earth

NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has caught a fascinating glimpse of a rare cosmic event. It has captured gamma rays older than Earth travelling across the universe.

The gamma rays discovered by the astronomers are some of the highest-energy light ever witnessed from a distant galaxy, according to NASA. The space agency further said that the gamma rays emerged from PKS 1441+25, an active galaxy known as a blazar.

The galaxy is situated so far from the Solar System that it takes 7.6 billion years for its light to reach Earth. At its heart lies a monster black hole with a mass estimated at 70 million times the Sun's and a surrounding disk of hot gas and dust.

In April 2015, PKS 1441+25 underwent a major eruption. Luigi Pacciani at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome was leading a project to catch blazar flares in their earliest stages in collaboration with the Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cerenkov experiment (MAGIC), located on La Palma in the Canary Islands.

The telescope revealed gamma rays measuring up to 33 billion electron volts (GeV) going into the portion that shows the highest energy in the telescope's detection range.

Following up on this discovery, the team behind the Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov experiment, also known as MAGIC, turned to the said blazar and found gamma rays with 40 to 250 GeV energies.

According to Tech Times, NASA’s discovery was unexpected since distance is very crucial for ultra high-energy gamma rays. These rays normally turn into particles once they collide with light with a lower energy.

Since the universe is 14 billion years old and the Earth has been in existence for just 4.5 billion years, the discovery indicates that these gamma rays are half the universe’s age. It also shows that these rays come from a place half a universe away.

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