Almost a year ago to the day there was an incredibly energetic burst of light from a black hole residing billions of light-years away. Any other burst of its kind may have gone unnoticed by astronomers given its distance, but this one was not only noticed and it was literally felt on our planet.
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00:00Almost a year ago to the day there was an incredibly energetic burst of light
00:07from a black hole residing billions of light-years away. Any other burst of its
00:11kind may have gone unnoticed by astronomers given its distance but this
00:14one was not only noticed it was literally felt on our planet. According
00:19to NASA gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful class of explosions in the
00:23universe and GRB 221009A from 2.4 billion miles away was the strongest one
00:29ever detected. Experts say it was so strong they were actually able to
00:33measure its effects in Earth's upper atmosphere detecting changes in the very
00:36electrical field there. With the researchers studying the phenomenon
00:40saying about it, using both satellite observations and a new ad hoc developed
00:44analytical model we proved that the GRB 221009A deeply impacted on Earth's
00:49ionosphere conductivity causing a strong perturbation not only in the bottom-side
00:54ionosphere but also in the top-side ionosphere at around 500 kilometers.
00:58Earth's ionosphere is a relatively thick layer of atmosphere ranging from
01:02around 30 miles to around 600 miles up. It protects us from much of the cosmic
01:07radiation zipping around in space including much of the harmful radiation
01:10from the Sun. Still the researchers say they were able to detect the gamma-ray
01:14bursts in the lower ionosphere where it had around the same impact as an
01:18exponentially closer solar flare.