In Baja California, where the stars look very close, the Colibri Guardian telescope. Since the end of 2024, he is ready to respond to urgent calls. His turn is fulminant; In less than 20 seconds you can point to heaven and testify the traces of the most violent explosions of the universe: gamma rays flashes. These mysterious events are known today as the death of massive stars that collapse at the end of their life, or the collision of neutron stars, where black holes are born.
The instrument is the result of a Franco-Mexican collaboration that began to imagine in 2009. Since then, some of the secrets of the flashes have revealed themselves, but not all. In their light they travel clues about the origin of heavy chemical elements, such as gold and platinum, whose creation is associated with energy cataclys. Even taking advantage of that they come from very far and are very bright, these elements are used as headlights to study the structure of the large -scale universe.
Colibri operates from the San Pedro Mártir National Astronomical Observatory, in the Sierra of the same name, declared a National Park in 1947. Among coniferous forests, astronomy is done next to hope: an area of the park houses a conservation program willing to avoid the extinction of the California condor; The plan is to protect young born in captivity to more than 2,800 kilometers, in the Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City.
The death of distant stars
The interest in these powerful flashes began in 1967, when it was admitted that American spy satellites had detected them. His mission was to determine if the Soviets performed nuclear tests on the hidden face of the moon; Therefore, they had instruments to see the gamma radiation of nuclear weapons. Some time later, they knew that the explosions did not come from the earth or our galaxy, they were distant and very bright phenomena.
In the following decades, these enigmatic events captured the attention of the scientific community. Physicist William Lee was one of the interested parties. The investigator today at the Institute of Astronomy of the UNAM, and responsible for the Mexican part of the Colibri telescope, remembers that, during his doctoral studies, little of these “bugs” was known, as he abbreviated the flashes that have occupied his mind during years. Even his doctoral thesis focused on theoretical models that could explain their origin. In those days, the scientist simulated these explosions of computer stars.
The ESE instrument shows us that black holes devour matter of more complex forms of what astronomers believed initially. The results point to a possible source of gravitational waves that the future smooth mission could detect.
Studying them has not been easy. Although they are the brightest phenomena after the Big Bang, the atmosphere blocks them, so they can only be detected with satellites. In addition, they are brief: in a few seconds they release as much energy as the sun in its entire life. For the luck of science, They leave a residual glow In X -rays, visible in satellites per hour, and in visible light, infrared and radio waves, which can be observed for hours or days from Earth. These signals, called counterparts, serve to make observation programs.
The flashes, explains William Lee, occur When a massive star, Up to 40 times the mass of the sun, exhausts its fuel and collapse. Also They arise when two neutron stars, They turn with each other, they merge. In both cases, a black hole is formed and a jet of matter is released at a speed close to that of light. If the event is a star collision, the flash lasts between 20 and 30 seconds. If it is a fusion of neutron stars, just a second fraction.
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