Speaker 1: Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos
Speaker 1: with our soothing Bedtime Astronomie podcast. Each episode offers a
Speaker 1: gentle journey through the stars, planets, and beyond, perfect for
Speaker 1: unwinding after a long day. Let's travel through the mysteries
Speaker 1: of the universe as you drift off into a peaceful
Speaker 1: slumber under the night sky.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the deep Dive. Today, we're looking at an
Speaker 2: event that, well, it really pushes the limits of what
Speaker 2: we thought was possible. We're talking about an explosion that
Speaker 2: not only set a new cosmic speed record, but also
Speaker 2: showed us in real time how the universe forges some
Speaker 2: of its rarest and most precious elements.
Speaker 3: It's an incredible story. We're drawing mainly from a paper
Speaker 3: in the Astrophysical Journal that details this one event GRB
Speaker 3: two three zero three zero seven A. And it's a
Speaker 3: benchmark for two completely different fields of physics. Really, you
Speaker 3: have relative on one side and cosmic chemistry on the other.
Speaker 2: And let's just start with the number that caught everyone's attention.
Speaker 2: I mean, this thing was measured moving it ninety nine
Speaker 2: point eight percent the speed of light.
Speaker 3: It's just It's almost impossible to get your head around that.
Speaker 3: The margin is so incredibly small to accelerate actual matter
Speaker 3: that close to the ultimate speed limit. It just tells
Speaker 3: you there's sheer power we're dealing with.
Speaker 2: Right, and you, the listeners, should know. This wasn't some
Speaker 2: decades long project. The paper detailing this was led by
Speaker 2: a graduate student, Sarah de Lesi at the University of
Speaker 2: Alabama in Huntsville.
Speaker 3: Which is amazing, and her work highlights these two monumental facts.
Speaker 3: It's the fastest jet we've ever measured, and it's also
Speaker 3: the second brightest gamma ray burst or GRB seen in
Speaker 3: over fifty years of looking.
Speaker 2: Wow. Okay, so that combination of speed and brightness is
Speaker 2: what makes it so special exactly. It's an absolute outlier phenomenal.
Speaker 2: So here's how we're going to break this down. First,
Speaker 2: we have to talk about that speed, How on earth
Speaker 2: do you even measure that? We'll get into something called
Speaker 2: the Lorentz factor. Then we'll look at the people and
Speaker 2: the technology behind the discovery. This wasn't an accident. It
Speaker 2: was a result of a huge, coordinated effort, a very
Speaker 2: rapid one, and finally the big payoff. How this record
Speaker 2: breaking burst gave us the smoking gun for where heavy
Speaker 2: elements we're talking gold, platinum, and one in particular, tilurium, actually.
Speaker 3: Come from the cosmic kitchen, as they call.
Speaker 2: It, the cosmic kitchen. Okay, let's start with the basics.
Speaker 2: What exactly is a gamma ray burst. We know they
Speaker 2: are the most powerful explosions out there, but what makes
Speaker 2: GRB two three zero three zero seven a stand out
Speaker 2: from the rest?
Speaker 3: Well, the first thing to remember is that a GRB
Speaker 3: isn't like a bomb going off in all directions. It's
Speaker 3: a highly focused beam of energy, a jet like.
Speaker 2: A cosmic laser beam sort of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a jet of matter and radiation moving incredibly fast.
Speaker 3: And this one two three zero three zero seven A
Speaker 3: is what scientists call ultra relativistic, which is just a
Speaker 3: fancy way of saying its speed is so extreme that
Speaker 3: you have to use Einstein's theory of special relativity to
Speaker 3: even begin to describe it.
Speaker 2: And that's where that ninety nine point nine nine eight
Speaker 2: percent the speed of light figure comes from. That's not
Speaker 2: just a mind boggling number. It implies some truly insane
Speaker 2: physics are happening at the source.
Speaker 3: It really does, and to measer that tiny difference between
Speaker 3: the jet speed and the actual speed of light, which
Speaker 3: is about one hundred and eighty six thousand miles per second.
Speaker 4: You need a special tool. You can't just subtract one
Speaker 4: from the other.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what is that tool.
Speaker 3: It's a number called the Lorentz factor, often just abbreviated
Speaker 3: as LF. It's a way of quantifying the effects of
Speaker 3: moving that fast. It tells you how much an object's
Speaker 3: energy is boosted because it's approaching the speed of light.
Speaker 2: So it's not a direct speed measurement, more like a
Speaker 2: measurement of the relativistic effects of that speed.
Speaker 3: Precisely, and in the context of this GRB, the Lorentz
Speaker 3: factor is what we use to measure the velocity of
Speaker 3: that that fireball of ejected material. A higher Lorentz factor
Speaker 3: means you're closer to the speed of light.
Speaker 2: And astronomers can calculate this how I mean, they're obviously
Speaker 2: not there with a radar gun.
Speaker 4: No, they're not.
Speaker 3: It all comes down to a phenomenon called relativistic beaming
Speaker 3: or Doppler boosting.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, this is why they appear so incredibly bright
Speaker 2: to us, even from billions of light years away.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 3: Exactly, when the jet is moving towards you at these speeds,
Speaker 3: all the light it's emitting gets focused into this very
Speaker 3: very narrow cone pointed right at you. The Lorentz factor
Speaker 3: quantifies how intense that focusing effect is. It makes the
Speaker 3: light appear way brighter and shifts it to higher energies
Speaker 3: than it would otherwise.
Speaker 2: To a higher Lorentz factor means a more focused, brighter beam.
Speaker 4: Right, And that's a huge clue.
Speaker 3: To actually get the number, astronomers have to watch the afterglow.
Speaker 2: The afterglow being the light produced after the initial flash
Speaker 2: as the jet material slams into all the gas and
Speaker 2: dust that's just sitting around in space.
Speaker 3: Yes, and as that jet plows into the interstellar medium,
Speaker 3: it starts to slow down, and as it slows, that
Speaker 3: beaming effect gets weaker. The light curve, the way the
Speaker 3: brightness fades over time, changes in a very specific way
Speaker 3: that depends directly on that initial Lorentz factor.
Speaker 2: So they're modeling the decay the light.
Speaker 3: They're modeling the decay looking at the spectrum how the
Speaker 3: energy of the light changes. They look for specific signatures
Speaker 3: in the radiation and by comparing what they see to
Speaker 3: these really sophisticated computer models, they can work backward and
Speaker 3: figure out what the initial speed must have been.
Speaker 2: It's like seeing the skid marks and calculating how fast
Speaker 2: the car was going before it hit the brakes.
Speaker 3: That's a great analogy, and that's how they came up
Speaker 3: with the Lorentz factor for GRB two three oh three
Speaker 3: user seven A.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's put that number in perspective. What did
Speaker 2: we think was fast for a GRB before this?
Speaker 3: Well, based on you know, decades of observations, a typical
Speaker 3: GRB might have a Lorentz factor of maybe a few hundreds.
Speaker 3: A three hundred and three.
Speaker 2: Hundred is already something like ninety nine point nine nine
Speaker 2: five percent the speed of light, right, already incredibly fast.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, mind moggelingly fast. We considered anything pushing up
Speaker 3: towards the Lorentz factor of one thousand to be, you know,
Speaker 3: exceptionally rare and energetic. That was sort of the upper
Speaker 3: limit of what we've seen.
Speaker 2: But this one wasn't hunt thousand nooks.
Speaker 4: What this one was measured sixteen.
Speaker 2: Hundred, Wow, sixteen hundred. That's not just breaking the record,
Speaker 2: it's it's shattering it.
Speaker 3: It completely shatters it. It's a sixty percent jump over
Speaker 3: the previous highest confirmed measurement. There's a great quote from
Speaker 3: doctor Peter Veyers, one of the authors, who just says,
Speaker 3: the Lorentz factor is the measure of speed of the
Speaker 3: jet here, and sixteen hundred is the highest we ever measured.
Speaker 3: It's just a plain statement of a new reality.
Speaker 2: So that number sixteen hundred means the matter in that
Speaker 2: jet was moving within just thirty parts per million of
Speaker 2: the speed of life.
Speaker 3: Yes, for you listening, just try to imagine the physics
Speaker 3: involved there. What kind of cosmic engine can take a
Speaker 3: huge amount of matter and accelerate it so perfectly, so
Speaker 3: efficiently that it gets that close to the absolute, unbreakable
Speaker 3: speed limit.
Speaker 4: Of the universe.
Speaker 2: It really forces you to ask new questions. Does this
Speaker 2: mean these explosions are even more powerful than we thought?
Speaker 2: Or is there some some new mechanism at play that
Speaker 2: makes the jet acceleration super efficient?
Speaker 3: And that's the big theoretical question this whole discovery raises,
Speaker 3: and of sixteen hundred suggests that the central engine whatever
Speaker 3: created this jet, converted its energy into outward motion with
Speaker 3: almost perfect efficiency.
Speaker 4: There was very little waste.
Speaker 2: So what could do that? What kind of engine are
Speaker 2: we talking about?
Speaker 3: The leading idea is that it has to involve incredibly
Speaker 3: powerful and very specifically ordered magnetic fields. Okay, so when
Speaker 3: you have two neutron stars merging, which we now know
Speaker 3: is what caused this, they briefly form this single super
Speaker 3: dense object that's spinning furiously, and it has a magnetic
Speaker 3: field that's just.
Speaker 2: Astronomical stronger than anything we can imagine.
Speaker 3: Thousands of times stronger than even a magnetars. And as
Speaker 3: this object spins, it winds up these magnetic field lines
Speaker 3: into a kind of twisted tower. That magnetic tower acts
Speaker 3: like a nozzle, a channel that funnels all the energy
Speaker 3: and plasma out into two perfectly straight jets.
Speaker 2: So it's not just a messy explosion. It's a finely
Speaker 2: tuned cosmic canon, a.
Speaker 3: Perfectly engineered cosmic syringe. Really, and a Lorentz factor of
Speaker 3: sixteen hundred tells us that for this specific event, that
Speaker 3: magnetic structure was almost flawless. It extracted energy from the
Speaker 3: merger and shot it into space with almost no loss.
Speaker 2: Incredible, and that perfect violent efficiency is what leads us
Speaker 2: to how it was even discovered in the first place.
Speaker 3: It does, which brings us to the logistics. I mean,
Speaker 3: an event this fast and this bright is over in
Speaker 3: a flash, you have to be ready, you have to
Speaker 3: be watching all the time.
Speaker 2: And the instrument that was watching was the Fermi Gamma
Speaker 2: Ray Burst Monitor or GBM. It's on NASA's Fermi Gamma
Speaker 2: Ray Space Telescope, which has been up there since two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight, basically staring at the sky waiting for
Speaker 2: these flashes.
Speaker 3: It's the universe's ultimate early warning system. The GBM itself
Speaker 3: has these fourteen detectors positioned all around the satellite, so
Speaker 3: it's always watching the whole sky at once. And the
Speaker 3: team that runs it is a huge international collaboration.
Speaker 2: Right with NASA, the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and
Speaker 2: crucially the operations hub at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Speaker 3: And that's where Sarah de Lesi, the lead author, comes
Speaker 3: into the story because at the exact moment this burst
Speaker 3: went off.
Speaker 4: She was on duty.
Speaker 2: What was her role, I mean, what does that actually
Speaker 2: involve in the moment.
Speaker 3: Her official title was the burst Advocate, and that's a
Speaker 3: very high pressure on call position.
Speaker 2: So she's the first human to analyze the data.
Speaker 3: Essentially, yes, the satellite detects a burst of gamma rays
Speaker 3: and automatically sends down an alert. The computer does a
Speaker 3: quick rough analysis, but it's the burst advocate who has
Speaker 3: to immediately jump on the raw data and figure out, Okay,
Speaker 3: what are we really looking at here?
Speaker 4: Is this real? Is it important?
Speaker 2: And the clock is ticking. You've got telescopes all over
Speaker 2: the world that need to be pointed at this thing
Speaker 2: right away if it's going to be studied in seconds.
Speaker 3: She has to figure out three things almost instantly. One
Speaker 3: where is it the localization so other telescopes know where
Speaker 3: to look. Two what kind of burst is it? The
Speaker 3: initial classification? And three how bright is it? And that
Speaker 3: last one is what set off all the alarm bells.
Speaker 2: Right, She's quoted in the source material saying she knew
Speaker 2: the this was an extraordinarily bright event, perhaps the second
Speaker 2: or third brightest GRB. Ever, how do you know that?
Speaker 2: In a matter of moments?
Speaker 3: It comes down to the photon count. The data packet
Speaker 3: from the satellite tells you how many gamma ray photons
Speaker 3: hit the detectors per second, and the number for this
Speaker 3: event was just off the charts. Her training and experience
Speaker 3: told her immediately that this wasn't a run of the millburst.
Speaker 3: This was something historic.
Speaker 2: And that quick expert decision is the lynchpin for everything
Speaker 2: that followed.
Speaker 3: Absolutely because she and the team could classify it as
Speaker 3: a major, major event so quickly they triggered a global alert.
Speaker 3: They told everyone with a powerful telescope, you need to
Speaker 3: drop what you're doing and point it here right now.
Speaker 2: And that includes getting a request in for time on
Speaker 2: the biggest instruments we have, like the James Webspace telescope.
Speaker 3: Exactly without that lightning fast analysis from the first advocate,
Speaker 3: the window to observe the actor glow would have closed.
Speaker 3: We would have seen the flash of GMS, but we
Speaker 3: would have missed the real prize, the killinova that followed
Speaker 3: the entire story of element creation would have been lost.
Speaker 2: It's amazing that it all inges on that one moment
Speaker 2: of human expertise. And this is the same team I
Speaker 2: should point out that also found the brightest GRB ever
Speaker 2: seen just a little while earlier.
Speaker 4: They're on an incredible run.
Speaker 3: It just shows that even with all our automated systems,
Speaker 3: you still need that sharp trained scientist in the loop
Speaker 3: to connect the dots and realize you're seeing something truly revolutionary.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's pivot from the detection to what they found.
Speaker 2: The speed was the headline, the brightness got their attention,
Speaker 2: but the real scientific gold mine was in confirming what
Speaker 2: kind of explosion this actually was. And that brings us,
Speaker 2: as you said, to the killinova. Right.
Speaker 3: The kilanova is the key piece of evidence. The GRB itself,
Speaker 3: that's the initial focused beam of light. It's incredibly bright,
Speaker 3: but it's over quickly. The kilanova is something different. It's
Speaker 3: the faint, fading glow from the cloud of radioactive debris
Speaker 3: thrown out by the explosion itself.
Speaker 2: So if the GOLB is the muzzle flash of the cannon,
Speaker 2: the killing nova is the lingering cloud of smoke.
Speaker 3: That's a perfect way to put it. And it's so
Speaker 3: important because a killanova is the unique, unambiguous signature of
Speaker 3: two super dense objects colliding, either two neutron stars or
Speaker 3: a neutron star in.
Speaker 4: A black hole.
Speaker 2: And why is it signature so unique? What's in that
Speaker 2: smoke cloud?
Speaker 3: Heavy elements, newly created heavy elements. This is where we
Speaker 3: get to that great analogy from Sarah to Lessi in
Speaker 3: the paper where she says these mergers act as a
Speaker 3: cosmic kitchen for heavy element.
Speaker 2: The cosmic kitchen. I love that. Yeah, let's break down
Speaker 2: that recipe. Why is a neutron star merger the perfect
Speaker 2: place to cook up things like gold and platinum when
Speaker 2: a regular star exploding can't do it?
Speaker 3: It all comes down to one crucial ingredient, neutrons, a ridiculous,
Speaker 3: unimaginable density of free neutrons.
Speaker 2: Because the neutron star is basically just a giant ball.
Speaker 4: Of them exactly.
Speaker 3: It's what's left after a star has collapsed and gravity
Speaker 3: has crushed all the atoms so tightly that the protons
Speaker 3: and electrons have merged to form neutrons. A single tea
Speaker 3: spoon of that stuff weighs billions of tons. Okay, So
Speaker 3: when two of those slam into each other, huge amounts
Speaker 3: of this pure neutron matter get ripped off and flung
Speaker 3: out into space, and.
Speaker 2: That cloud of ejected neutrons is where the magic happens.
Speaker 3: That's where the alchemy happens. For a very brief moment,
Speaker 3: you have this cloud that is both incredibly hot and
Speaker 3: packed with more free neutrons than anywhere else in the universe.
Speaker 3: And in those conditions you get something called the rapid
Speaker 3: neutron capture process, the.
Speaker 2: R process, rapid being the keyword there, the keyword.
Speaker 3: It means that existing atomic nuclei like iron or just
Speaker 3: bombarded with this flood of neutrons. They absorb neutrons faster,
Speaker 3: much faster than they have time to radioactively decay, So
Speaker 3: they just get heavier and heavier and heavier, climbing up
Speaker 3: the periodic table in a split second.
Speaker 2: So it's a high speed nuclear assembly line, the.
Speaker 3: Ultimate assembly line. It's the only way we know of
Speaker 3: to produce most of the elements heavier than iron. So
Speaker 3: every gold wedding band, every platinum catalyst in a car,
Speaker 3: it was all forged in a cataclysm like this one.
Speaker 2: That is just incredible to think about it. So we
Speaker 2: have this theory. The GRB goes off, we see the
Speaker 2: Kilanova and we say, aha, the our process is happening
Speaker 2: in there. But this observation, when a step further, didn't
Speaker 2: it they actually saw one of the elements being made.
Speaker 3: They did, and this is the monumental part of the discovery.
Speaker 3: They found the specific spectral fingerprint of the heavy element tulurium.
Speaker 2: Telurium. Why is that one so important? We always hear
Speaker 2: about gold and platinum.
Speaker 3: Well, golden platinum are definitely being made in there, but
Speaker 3: they are incredibly difficult to see. Their atomic structures are
Speaker 3: so complex that they just create a sort of a messy,
Speaker 3: blended out spectrum in the Kilanova's light. It's hard to
Speaker 3: pick out a clear signal.
Speaker 2: They're spectroscopically noisy, you could say.
Speaker 4: Varying razy.
Speaker 3: Tilurium, however, has a much cleaner, more distinct signature. It
Speaker 3: produces very clear absorption lines in the near infrared part
Speaker 3: part of the spectrum, and.
Speaker 2: Which telescope is the undisputed king of near infrared astronomy.
Speaker 3: The James web Space telescope. So the follow up team
Speaker 3: in Europe knew exactly what to do. They pointed Web
Speaker 3: at the fading law of this event, looked at the
Speaker 3: near infrared light, and there it was not an inference,
Speaker 3: not a guess from a model, but a clear, direct,
Speaker 3: unmistakable signature of tellurium.
Speaker 2: That's the smoking gun.
Speaker 4: That is the smoking gun.
Speaker 3: It's the first time we've ever directly identified a specific
Speaker 3: r process element being created in the aftermath of a GRB, So.
Speaker 2: The whole chain of events is complete. The record breaking
Speaker 2: speed got their attention. The rapid follow up. Let them
Speaker 2: watch the aftermath and the power of JWST Let them
Speaker 2: look inside that aftermath and confirm that this cosmic kitchen
Speaker 2: was in fact cooking up tellurium, an element we use
Speaker 2: right here on Earth in things like solar panels.
Speaker 3: It's a perfect connection from the most extreme relativistic physics
Speaker 3: in the universe straight down to the chemistry that enables
Speaker 3: our technology. A truly remarkable piece of detective work.
Speaker 2: So where does the field go from here? I mean,
Speaker 2: this discovery was so successful it seems like it lays
Speaker 2: out a clear path forward for researchers like Sarah de Lassie.
Speaker 3: It does, but it also creates a new puzzle. The
Speaker 3: big challenge now is that GRB two three zero three
Speaker 3: oh seven aa kind of breaks the old rules we
Speaker 3: use for classification. So historically, the rule of thumb was
Speaker 3: pretty simple. If a GRB lasted for more than two seconds,
Speaker 3: it was a long burst, and we assumed it came
Speaker 3: from a massive star collapsing. If it was less than
Speaker 3: two seconds a short burst, we assumed it was a
Speaker 3: merger of two compact objects.
Speaker 2: Okay, that seems straightforward enough.
Speaker 3: But this one two three oh three oh seven A
Speaker 3: was a long burst.
Speaker 4: It lasted for quite a while.
Speaker 3: Yet the Kilanov approved without any doubt that its source
Speaker 3: was a merger.
Speaker 2: So it was a long burst from a merger event.
Speaker 2: It breaks the mold.
Speaker 3: It completely breaks a mold, And this is where the
Speaker 3: cutting edge research is now. The biggest goal in what
Speaker 3: de Lessie is working on is finding more of these weird,
Speaker 3: long duration merger events.
Speaker 2: To see if this is a one off freak event
Speaker 2: enter a whole new class of explosion we didn't know
Speaker 2: about exactly.
Speaker 3: If we can find more, it helps us understand the
Speaker 3: different ways neutron star mergers can play out. Maybe sometimes
Speaker 3: they collapse into a black hole instantly creating a short burst,
Speaker 3: but maybe other times, like this one, they form a
Speaker 3: temporary hyper massive neutron star that survives for a few
Speaker 3: extra seconds, pumping out a longer lasting jet.
Speaker 2: But the big bottleneck is still there, isn't it. To
Speaker 2: be sure it's a merger, you have to catch that kilnova,
Speaker 2: which means you need that massive, time sensitive follow up
Speaker 2: campaign with telescopes like web.
Speaker 3: It is the bottleneck. It's expensive and you have to
Speaker 3: be incredibly fast. We got lucky with two three zero
Speaker 3: three oh seven A because it was so bright we
Speaker 3: knew it was special. But what about a fainter one.
Speaker 3: We can't point web at every single long GRB just
Speaker 3: on a hunch, so.
Speaker 2: We need a wait to know what's a merger before
Speaker 2: the Killinova even appears.
Speaker 3: That's the holy grail, and that's de Leesi's specific research goal.
Speaker 3: She's trying to find a subtle signature, a hidden clue
Speaker 3: in the prompt emission, the shall flash of gamma rays
Speaker 3: itself that screams.
Speaker 2: Mergers, kind of secret handshake and the light curve. What
Speaker 2: are they looking for.
Speaker 3: They're digging through the data looking for tiny differences between
Speaker 3: the jets from mergers and the jets from collapsing stars.
Speaker 3: Maybe the jet from a merger has a slightly different
Speaker 3: temperature or a slightly different energy spectrum because it's blasting
Speaker 3: out into a cleaner environment.
Speaker 2: Whereas the jet from a collapsing star has to punch
Speaker 2: its way out of the star's outer layers.
Speaker 3: First, right, and that might leave a mark on the
Speaker 3: gamma ray signal. They're looking for subtle wiggles in the
Speaker 3: light curve or changes in the spectral properties. It's a
Speaker 3: huge data analysis challenge. But if they can crack it.
Speaker 2: If they can crack it, they can know a long
Speaker 2: GRB is from a merger in milliseconds, not days.
Speaker 3: And that changes everything. It means we can trigger follow
Speaker 3: up observations instantly and systematically. We stop relying on luck
Speaker 3: and brightness and we start being able to study every
Speaker 3: single one of these element factories that goes off, no
Speaker 3: matter how faint moves.
Speaker 2: The whole feel from being reactive to being predictive, making
Speaker 2: sure we never miss another one of these cosmic kitchens
Speaker 2: in action. That's the goal. What a fantastic story. So
Speaker 2: to sum this all up, we dove into GRB two
Speaker 2: three zero three zero seven a an event that set
Speaker 2: a stunning new speed record with a jet moving at
Speaker 2: ninety nine point nine nine nine nine eight percent the
Speaker 2: speed of light, which corresponds to a Lorentz factor of
Speaker 2: sixteen hundred.
Speaker 3: A number that really blew past all previous records. We
Speaker 3: saw how a rapid response team with a graduate student
Speaker 3: at the center of the action caught this fleeting event
Speaker 3: using the FERMIGBM and that speed allowed for the crucial
Speaker 3: follow up with the James Webspace Telescope.
Speaker 2: Which in turn led to the Grand Finale, the first
Speaker 2: ever direct confirmation of a specific heavy element to Laurum
Speaker 2: being forged in the killinova of a neutron star merger.
Speaker 3: Proving that these violent cosmic collisions are indeed the factories
Speaker 3: that create the heavy elements we find all around us.
Speaker 2: The future nollies and try and find a way to
Speaker 2: identify these merger events from their initial flash alone, to
Speaker 2: make these discoveries routine rather than revolutionary.
Speaker 3: And that leaves us with, I think a really interesting
Speaker 3: final thought for you to take away. We now know
Speaker 3: for sure that this process works, but our ability to
Speaker 3: confirm it depended on this event being an extreme outlier,
Speaker 3: one of the brightest ever seen. So the question is this,
Speaker 3: if the average GRB is much fainter, much harder to
Speaker 3: follow up on, how many of these art process events
Speaker 3: have we already missed? How much of the universe's gold, platinum,
Speaker 3: and tellurium has been created, and explosions that we saw
Speaker 3: but just couldn't classify in time. It makes you wonder
Speaker 3: what cosmic history is still hiding in plain sight.
Speaker 2: As most dass