Why in news?

Astronomers have observed the brightest flash of light ever seen, from an event that occurred 2.4 billion light years from Earth and was likely triggered by the formation of a black hole the coming years.

Highlights

• The burst of gamma rays the most intense form of electromagnetic radiation  was first detected by orbiting telescopes
• India was one of the places that caught the gamma ray burst
• Gamma ray bursts that last hundreds of seconds, as occurred , are thought to be caused by dying massive stars, greater than 30 times bigger than our Sun.
• The star explodes in a supernova, collapses into a black hole, then matter forms in a disk around the black hole, falls inside, and is spewed out in a jet of energy that travels at 99.99 percent the speed of light.
• From India, The Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune, National Centre for Radio Astrophysics Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Pune and IIT Mumbai also took part

What are black holes ?

• A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing no particles or even electromagnetic radiation such as light can escape from
• The theory of general relativity of Albert Einstein predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole.
• The boundary of no escape is called the event horizon.
• Event horizon telescope is first ever image of black hole
• Gravitational waves are created when two black holes orbit each other and merge.