The telescope tracked the incredibly bright gamma-ray burst down to a kilobyte, a dramatic event thought to create heavy elements like gold. Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have traced an incredibly bright gamma-ray burst (GRB) to its source, a powerful collision between two neutron stars.

The ring on your finger likely contains atoms created by such neutron star collisions, also called “kylons.” Because kilonovas are thought to be places where the heaviest elements of the universe, which cannot be synthesized in the nuclear furnaces at the heart of the stars, are forged, as well as their explosion with long-term gamma-ray bursts.

These elements are thought to be created through a mechanism called neutron capture, or the r-process, which allows atomic nuclei to capture neutrons to form new and heavier elements such as gold, platinum, and uranium. R-processing can only occur under extreme and violent conditions, such as those seen around colliding neutron stars.

This is the first time JWST has been used to detect emissions from such an event, and the powerful space telescope was also able to detect signatures of heavy elements forged in an explosive event. In particular, the team saw evidence for the presence of the heavy element telluride and the formation of lanthanides, a group of 15 metals heavier than lead.

“These observations show that gamma burst nucleosynthesis can produce r-process elements over a wide variety of atomic masses and play a central role in the nucleosynthesis of heavy elements in the universe,” the team wrote in a paper detailing their findings.

A team led by Andrew Lewan, a professor at Radboud University in the Netherlands, investigated the GRB prior to the kilonova source and is remarkable in its own right. Labeled GRB 230307A, it was first detected by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Telescope on March 7, 2023, and is the second brightest GRB ever seen.

The GRB took about 34 seconds and was detected by several other telescopes, allowing astronomers to triangulate it with respect to its source. Team member Brian Metzger of Columbia University discussed the success in a series of tweets on Thursday, July 6.

“In the Andrew Levan-led study, we detected (for the first time!) kiloton emission with the JWST after a GRB,” Metzger wrote. “Perhaps the biggest plot: the gamma ray burst – the second brightest burst of all time – lasted half a minute, the second “long” burst was accompanied by the formation of the r-process. Probably a neutron star merger, but how long the central engine ‘flowed’ It challenges our understanding of what needs to be done.”

JWST observed the kilonova twice, first 29 days after the GRB and then 61 days after the eruption again, and the rapid fading and blue-to-red transition between these observations indicates its kilonova nature.

The team identified several bright galaxies near Kilonova that could be the collision site of neutron stars and thus the source of GRB 230307A. They prefer the brightest of these galaxies, which is about 8.3 million light-years from Earth and about 130,000 light-years from the GRB source.

Kilonova could be seen in another type of radiation besides light. Collisions of neutron stars cause the fabric of space-time to “ring” in the form of gravitational waves. These waves can be detected here on Earth with detectors such as the Laser Interferometric Gravitational-Wave Observatory, but LIGO was not active when the GRB 230307A was lit. At the time, the plant was in the midst of a three-year shutdown, undergoing upgrades to make it more precise, and did not return to service until May 2023. Source