Gamma-ray Burst Brightest Ever Detected [VIDEO]

A gamma-ray burst observed earlier this year was the brightest one ever seen, a recent analysis of the explosive event determined.

Gamma-rays are believed to originate when a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel and collapses into a black hole, which then drills jets of particles through the dying star and burst into space at speeds nearly as fast as the speed of light.

The most energetic form of light in the universe, gamma-rays pack more than 500,000 times more energy than visible light.

The latest burst was caught on camera April 27 by a trio of NASA satellites that, with the help of ground-based telescopes, gathered never-before-seen details -- details that called into question theories regarding the mechanics of gamma-ray bursts.

"We expect to see an event like this only once or twice a century, so we're fortunate it happened when we had the appropriate collection of sensitive space telescopes with complementary capabilities available to see it," Paul Hertz, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division in Washington,said in a statement.

The Gamma-ray Burst Monitor aboard NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope captured the initial wave of gamma-rays, the first three seconds of the "monster burst" alone was brighter than almost any previous.

"The spectacular results from Fermi GBM show that our widely accepted picture of MeV gamma rays from internal shock waves is woefully inadequate," said Rob Preece, a Fermi team member at the University of Alabama in Huntsville who led the GBM study.

The Swift Gamma-ray Burst Mission detected the burst almost simultaneously, quickly relaying its position to the ground.

"We thought the visible light for these flashes came from internal shocks, but this burst shows that it must come from the external shock, which produces the most energetic gamma-rays," said Sylvia Zhu, a Fermi team member at the University of Maryland in College Park.

The burst is currently the subject of five papers published this week by Science Express and The Astrophysical Journal Letters.