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NASA's New Telescope to Spot Universe's Violent Events

nasa-glastToday NASA's Glast mission is going to launch a space telescope the goal of which is to spot the most violent events that take place in the universe. The telescope will be launched from Cape Canaveral air force station, located in Florida.

 

NASA hopes its new mission will help search the universe for gamma rays. It is worth mentioning that the gamma rays are emitted by the black holes, as well as amalgamation of neutron stars and streams of hot gas that travel through the universe at enormous speeds.

 

The new observatory costs $690 million and it is expected to take images of the gamma rays, thus providing answers about the source of cosmic rays, as well as the answer to how black holes are able to accelerate huge jets of material to a speed that is close to the speed of light.

 

According to the United States space agency the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (Glast) will be launched somewhere between 11.45am and 1.40pm EDT. However, the agency's representatives mentioned that there is a 40 percent probability that the launch will be aborted due to bad weather.

 

"Glast enables scientists to look under the hood and see how the universe works," mentioned project scientist, Steve Ritz. It's interesting to note that gamma rays represent the most energetic form of electromagnetic radiation found in our universe. The energy is billions of time more powerful than the visible light.

 

The orbiting lab will serve for making researches about strong bursts of gamma rays. According to the astronomers the gamma rays in one second emit as much energy as our sun during five billion years. In addition the mission is going to study the mysterious dark matter, which is believed to account for the biggest mass in the universe.

 

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