Chinese researchers have developed a new model to explain the origin of an ultra-long gamma ray burst, as part of ongoing research to understand these violent cosmic phenomena.
Gamma ray bursts are among the most violent explosive phenomena in the universe, and usually last from milliseconds to a few minutes. However, the “GRB 250702b” event, which occurred on July 2, 2025, showed exceptional characteristics that sparked widespread controversy within the astrophysics community.
A research team from the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences conducted a comprehensive analysis of monitoring data via satellites, including the Insight-HXMT and GECAM satellites, and studied data for a period of 30 days around the time of the explosion, discovering that the emission of gamma rays lasted an unprecedented period of 29 hours, breaking previous records for the duration of this phenomenon.
According to the study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, the researchers also identified distinct temporal variations in the accompanying
Unlike parent stars in regular gamma-ray bursts, the collapse process of very massive stars may extend over dozens of days.
When a star exhausts its nuclear fuel, its core collapses first, forming a black hole, which quickly swallows the star’s inner matter, generating relativistic jets that move at speeds approaching the speed of light, which are the main source of gamma ray bursts. During the subsequent accretion process, slightly slower jets are generated, emitting radiation
