The best look ever at a giant flare - Tech Explorist

Astrophysicist Matthew Baring, a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University, said, “Giant flares start with an intense flash that lasts about a tenth of a second, and for that brief instant, the amount of energy they release in gamma-rays is about 10 trillion to 100 trillion times the energy of the optical light from our sun.”.

Even though it was intrinsically bright, it was far enough away that our instrument, the Fermi Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor, got a perfect look, a view that we have never had before of that first initial flash from a giant flare.

Spectroscopic data from the April 15 giant flare will allow physicists to test theoretical models of magnetars that haven’t previously been verifiable and could lead to a fuller understanding of not only magnetars but of the ways intense magnetic fields influence fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics

Additional co-authors of the Nature study include Oliver Roberts of the University Space Research Association, Peter Veres, Michael Briggs, Narayana Bhat and Rachel Hamburg of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Chryssa Kouveliotou, George Younes, Sarah Chastain and Alexander van der Horst of George Washington University, James DeLaunay and Jamie Kennea of Pennsylvania State University, Daniela Huppenkothen of the University of Amsterdam, Aaron Tohuvavohu of the University of Toronto, Elisabetta Bissaldi of the University of Bari, Ersin Göğüş of Sabançi University, Daniel Kocevski of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Justin Linford of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Sylvain Guiriec of both George Washington University and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Colleen Wilson-Hodge of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and Eric Burns of Louisiana State University