Extragalactic signal is split in time into two beams, ancient Earth and the Sun by about 2.5 billion years.
Astronomers have recorded a powerful gamma-ray burst from an unusual space object QSO B0218+357.
The beam of cosmic particles due to the curvature of space-time is divided into two parts, which reached the Earth with a difference of 10-12 days. The findings of scientists was published in the journal Astronomy&Astrophysics.
QSO B0218+357 is a blazar, the distance from which the Earth is estimated at seven billion light-years. This is a rare type of quasars — the brightest objects in the Universe that formed supermassive black hole and absorb it substance. They are assumed to represent nuclei of active galaxies. However, blazey differ in that they are very compact, and their brightness changed periodically. Like other quasars, they emit jets of plasma (jets) at a speed close to the speed of light.
In July 2014, scientists have recorded a powerful flash in QSO B0218+357, the Energy of the photons that have reached our planet, were closer to the values 65-175 GeV.
As between the blazar and Earth is a massive object that distorts its gravitational field in space-time, the rays from QSO B0218+357 crashed into two beams, and one of them came 10-12 days after the second. This phenomenon is called gravitational lensing.
According to astrophysicists, at the moment of QSO blazar B0218+357 is the most remote source of gamma rays from the known.
