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NASA Missions Discover Record-Setting Blast

LSU astrophysicist Eric Burns is among scientists poring over data from NASA satellites and other facilities as they try to determine what caused an extraordinary cosmic outburst discovered on July 2.

Dec 9, 2025

3 min

Eric Burns


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Black Hole Eats Star: NASA Missions Discover Record-Setting Blast


Dr. Eric Burns, associate professor of Physics & Astronomy in LSU’s College of Science, leads a consortium that studies gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), including the July event that, because of its long duration, stands in a class by itself. Because opportunities to study such events are so rare, and because they may reveal new ways to create GRBs, astronomers are particularly excited about the July burst.


Burns discussed the discovery and the significance of this area of research.


Can you explain your interest in gamma-ray bursts, why they matter, and how they play into these new discoveries?


"I run a consortium that studies gamma-ray bursts. These are the most luminous explosions in the universe, other than the Big Bang itself.


The consortium's been operating for almost 50 years. We've seen 15,000 gamma-ray bursts. We've used these sightings to understand the speed of gravity, where gold is created, and fundamental properties in the universe.


In July, we detected a gamma-ray burst that was longer than we've ever seen before. They're normally like 30 seconds long. This one was 8 hours. It was so long that we didn't believe it was a gamma-ray burst for a while."


What was your role in investigating this phenomenon?


"The consortium I run helped find it and helped figure out where it was coming from. We put a bunch of telescopes on it to try and figure out what was happening and to understand what caused this event.


Normal gamma-ray bursts come from a massive star near the end of its life. The interior of the star collapses, and it forms a black hole. That black hole eats it from the inside out, and it launches this matter that's moving at basically the speed of light, and that produces your gamma-ray burst.


By chance, a colleague and I had written a paper earlier this year on what is the longest gamma-ray burst you could produce with this scenario. And the answer is 1,000 seconds. So we're pretty sure that what happened here was this: You have that massive star, but instead of its core becoming the black hole, instead you have a black hole that falls into it. Or they sort of fall into each other."


How was this long gamma-ray burst discovered? And what led to your involvement in studying it?


"We have what’s called gamma-ray burst monitors. They're a version of a telescope, but they're not like a long tube that you use to see visible light with your eyes. They're actually crystals that detect when they are hit by a gamma ray by fluorescing and sending out light. And so we could detect them that way.


In the consortium I run, there are about a dozen of these gamma ray detectors. They're all on different satellites. Most of them are around Earth, but some of them are much further out in our solar system.


We've automated most of our processes. The spacecraft itself will detect this event and report it to the community. All of that happens in like 30 seconds. In this case, our satellite had four different triggers spread over eight hours, and a member of the community pointed out that these events were coming from the same general area in the sky.


So, even before the last trigger, within a couple hours, we realized, oh, there's something really long happening here that we haven't really seen before."


Full story available here.

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Eric Burns

Eric Burns

Associate Professor

Dr. Burns uses multidisciplinary research to understand how the universe works.

AstrophysicsNuclear ScienceGravitational WavesCosmic ExplosionsSupernova
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