Researchers have discovered the cause of the brightest burst of light on record.
But along the way they encountered two bigger mysteries.
One of them casts doubt on where heavy elements, such as gold, come from.
At the center of the burst of light observed in 2022 was discovered to be an exploding star, researchers say.
But that explosion, by itself, would not have caused such a great bang.
Current theory suggests that some exploding stars, known as supernovae, may also produce heavy elements in the universe, such as gold and platinum.
But the research team found none of these elements, leading to new questions about how precious metals form.
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Such results help science progress, says Professor Catherine Heymans from the University of Edinburgh, who is not part of the scientific team.
“The universe is an amazing, wonderful and surprising place, and I love the way it poses these puzzles for us.
"The fact that it doesn't give us the answers we want is great because we can go back to the drawing board and rethink and come up with better theories," she said.
Telescopes spotted the explosion in October 2022.
It came from a galaxy 2,4 billion light years away, emitting light at all frequencies.
But the explosion was particularly strong in gamma rays, which are a more penetrating form of X-rays.
The gamma ray burst lasted for seven minutes and was so powerful that it was off the scale, overwhelming the instruments that detected it.
Subsequent readings showed that the burst was 100 times brighter than anything previously recorded.
Gamma ray bursts are associated with exploding supernovae, but this one was so bright that it couldn't be easily explained.
If it was a supernova, according to the current theory, it would mean that it had to be huge.
The burst was so bright that it initially blinded the instruments of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
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The telescope only recently started operating, and this was incredibly lucky for astronomers who wanted to study this phenomenon because such powerful explosions are calculated to happen once every 10.000 years.
As the light dimmed, one of NASA's telescope instruments was able to record that a supernova explosion had indeed occurred.
But she wasn't nearly as strong as they expected.
So why was the gamma ray burst off the scale?
Dr. Peter Blanchard from Northwestern University, in the American state of Illinois, who led the research team, says he does not know.
But he wants to find out.
He plans to spend more time working on NASA's telescope to investigate other supernova remnants.
"It's possible that these gamma rays and supernova explosions aren't necessarily directly related and that they could be separate processes going on," he said.
Dr. Tanmoy Laskar of the University of Utah and one of the leaders of the research, said that the power of this burst can be explained by the way the jets of material were dispersed, as usually happens during supernovae.
But if these jets are narrow, they create a more focused and therefore brighter beam of light.
"It's like focusing a flashlight beam on a narrow pole, as opposed to a wide beam that spans the entire wall.
"In fact, this was one of the narrowest jets seen in gamma-ray bursts to date, which gives us a clue as to why the afterglow looked so bright," he said.
Rethinking theory
But what about the missing gold?
According to one theory, one of the ways heavy elements such as gold, platinum, lead and uranium can be produced is in the extreme conditions created during supernovae.
They are spread throughout the galaxy and are present during the formation of planets.
That's how we have the gold we found on Earth, says this theory.
There is evidence that heavy elements can be produced when dead stars, called neutron stars, collide.
It's a process called a kilonova, but it's thought that not many metals can be created this way.
The team will investigate other supernova remnants to see if heavy elements can still be produced in exploding stars, but only under certain conditions.
But the researchers found no evidence of heavy elements around the exploding star.
Is the theory therefore wrong, and heavy elements are produced in some other way, or are they created only in supernovae and under certain conditions?
"Theorists should go back and look at why heavy elements did not form during the most brilliant explosion on record, when theories and simulations predict that they should," Dr. Blanchard pointed out.
The research was published in the journal Nature astronomers (Nature Astronomy).
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