Russian satellite detects gamma-ray burst from 11.3 bln years ago

ST. PETERSBURG, Jan. 20 (Xinhua) -- A Russian satellite has detected a powerful gamma-ray burst that occurred 11.3 billion years ago, RIA Novosti news agency reported Tuesday.

The gamma-ray burst GRB 260101A was recorded by a gamma-ray spectrometer installed aboard the 239Alferov CubeSat.

Researchers believe the burst was caused by the gravitational collapse of the core of a massive star tens of times heavier than the Sun.

According to Dmitry Svinkin, a senior researcher at the Laboratory of Experimental Astrophysics of the Ioffe Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, data collected by the satellite will help improve the accuracy of determining the positions of gamma-ray bursts in the sky. ■