Science Daily altered one sentence from the originally regurgitated PR, and I think it thoughtlessly corrupted its entire meaning.
SD: "The blast generates two jets of gamma rays which travel out..."
PR: "The blast generates two jets which travel out ... The jets emit gamma rays,..."
Implication from their creative edit is that the blast itself shot out gamma rays (photons) at light speed, whereas the paper's authors actually described something else, a decades-long process of ejecta compressing and interacting to create gamma emissions. "The long time baseline of this event offers the best available constraint in afterglow evolution as the bulk of shock-accelerated electrons become non-relativistic."
My understanding is that the famous '91 OMG particle (proton?) was theorized to have been generated by an expanding shock wave, except unlike here the scientific community then spent some time doubting their readings and being unable to re-verify the phenomenon. Conversely this new study observed such an event spanning from 1975-2017 using 7 different instruments.
Since then, over 70 more like it have been seen; most seem to arrive from the Ursa Major direction, "from a distinct source near our galaxy and not from sources spread all over the universe." https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/07/physicists-spot-pote...
SD: "The blast generates two jets of gamma rays which travel out..."
PR: "The blast generates two jets which travel out ... The jets emit gamma rays,..."
Implication from their creative edit is that the blast itself shot out gamma rays (photons) at light speed, whereas the paper's authors actually described something else, a decades-long process of ejecta compressing and interacting to create gamma emissions. "The long time baseline of this event offers the best available constraint in afterglow evolution as the bulk of shock-accelerated electrons become non-relativistic."
My understanding is that the famous '91 OMG particle (proton?) was theorized to have been generated by an expanding shock wave, except unlike here the scientific community then spent some time doubting their readings and being unable to re-verify the phenomenon. Conversely this new study observed such an event spanning from 1975-2017 using 7 different instruments.
Original PR: https://www.dunlap.utoronto.ca/astronomers-discover-sonic-bo...
Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.08964