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A gamma ray, also known as gamma radiation (symbol γ), is a penetrating form of electromagnetic radiation arising from high energy interactions like the radioactive decay of atomic nuclei or astronomical events like solar flares. It consists of the shortest wavelength electromagnetic waves, typically shorter than those of X-rays.
After hard X-rays come gamma rays, which were discovered by Paul Ulrich Villard in 1900. These are the most energetic photons , having no defined lower limit to their wavelength. In astronomy they are valuable for studying high-energy objects or regions, however as with X-rays this can only be done with telescopes outside the Earth's atmosphere.
Long before experiments could detect gamma rays emitted by cosmic sources, scientists had known that the universe should be producing them. Work by Eugene Feenberg and Henry Primakoff in 1948, Sachio Hayakawa and I.B. Hutchinson in 1952, and, especially, Philip Morrison in 1958 [6] had led scientists to believe that a number of different processes which were occurring in the universe would ...
A gamma ray burst (GRB) is the most powerful form of explosion in the known universe.They are produced when massive stars die, right before they turn into black holes, and were originally ...
One of those was deflected by a magnetic field (as were the familiar "canal rays") and could be identified with Rutherford's beta rays. The last type was a very penetrating kind of radiation which had not been identified before. Villard was a modest man and he did not suggest a specific name for the type of radiation he had discovered.
The history of gamma-ray [1] began with the serendipitous detection of a gamma-ray burst (GRB) on July 2, 1967, by the U.S. Vela satellites. After these satellites detected fifteen other GRBs, Ray Klebesadel of the Los Alamos National Laboratory published the first paper on the subject, Observations of Gamma-Ray Bursts of Cosmic Origin. [2]
This gamma-ray burst, researchers said on Tuesday, caused a significant disturbance in Earth's ionosphere, a layer of the planet's upper atmosphere that contains electrically charge
On 27 October 2015, at 22:40 GMT, the NASA/ASI/UKSA Swift satellite discovered its 1000th gamma-ray burst (GRB). [140] Gamma ray bursts can have harmful or destructive effects on life. Considering the universe as a whole, the safest environments for life similar to that on Earth are the lowest density regions in the outskirts of large galaxies.