An international team of astrophysicists has registered a powerful burst of gamma rays from an unusual space object QSO B0218 + 357. Due to the curvature of space-time, the beam of high-energy particles split into two parts, which collided with our planet with a difference of 10-12 days. The scientists presented their findings in an article published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
QSO B0218 + 357 is a blazar, estimated at seven billion light years from Earth. These are a rare type of quasars - the brightest objects in the Universe, which are formed by a supermassive black hole and the matter it engulfs. They are presumably the nuclei of active elliptical galaxies. However, blazars are distinguished by the fact that they are very compact, and their brightness periodically changes. Like other quasars, they eject jets of plasma (jets) at a speed close to the speed of light.
In July 2014, scientists discovered that a powerful flash had occurred on QSO B0218 + 357. It was registered with the help of the Fermi-LAT space observatory and the MAGIC Cherenkov telescope, which is designed to register particles generated by the collision of gamma radiation with the Earth's atmosphere. The energy of the photons that reached our planet reached values of 65-175 gigaelectronvolts.
Since there is a massive object between the blazar and the Earth, which bends space-time with its gravitational field, the rays from QSO B0218 + 357 split into two beams, and one of them came 10-12 days later than the second. This phenomenon is called gravitational lensing.
According to astrophysicists, the blazar QSO B0218 + 357 is currently the most distant source of gamma rays known.