Dr. Daniel Reichart always knew his job was out of this world.
His latest discovery proves how right he was.

Reichart has identified the oldest explosion ever observed in
the universe, an event, he says, that can open astronomy to new
areas.

On Sept. 4, the University of North Carolina professor, along
with undergraduate student Josh Haislip, detected the most distant
explosion yet -ða gamma ray burst on the edge of the visible
universe, according to a NASA press release.

“This is uncharted territory,” Reichart said from his office in
Chapel Hill. “It’s exciting to make a discovery like that … we are
finally starting to see the remnants of some of the oldest objects
in the universe.”

“Objects are out there. We use them to study the universe in
ways never possible before. It opens a new field in astronomy.”

The former Bradford man, who spearheaded the distance
measurement, explained that 12.8 billion years ago, a star exploded
in the universe. The universe itself goes back 13.7 billion years.
According to NASA, the burst comes from an era soon after stars and
galaxies first formed, about 500 million to 1 billion years after
the Big Bang.

The blast, which lasted about 200 seconds, was detected by
NASA’s Swift satellite. After the satellite detects something, it
sends a text message by e-mail, Web sites and cell phones of the
coordinates to astronomers on the ground.

“I don’t get any sleep anymore,” Reichart said. “I chase every
single one.”

There are times, however, that once he reaches the telescope, he
can’t see the object because, for instance, it could be in a
different hemisphere.

This time was different.

At 10 p.m. Sept. 3, Reichart received the text message on his
cell phone about a gamma burst ray.

His team discovered the afterglow with the SOAR – Southern
Observatory for Astrophysical Research – telescope in Chile. All of
the observations were done remotely, he said.

Once they located the object, they realized it was not
previously archived.

“It was very promising,” he said. “Hours later, we observed it
again. It was still there, but faded.”

That, however, is expected since an explosion is only bright for
a short amount of time, Reichart said.

Because the explosion was so far away, the light from it is only
now reaching Earth.

Reichart needed a special infrared camera. Infrared, he
explained, is “kind of like heat. For example, when we feel warmth.
It’s that kind of light. We don’t see it, but the telescope and
camera can detect it.

He said they got really excited when he searched for the
afterglow with PROMPT – six Panchromatic Robotic Optical Monitoring
and Polarimetry Telescopes – a mountain away from SOAR. PROMPT was
a project Reichart spearheaded, too.

The afterglow in infrared light lingered for several days,
allowing scientists to measure the distance of the burst, according
to NASA.

When PROMPT didn’t see anything, that was exactly what they
wanted.

“There was nothing there,” Reichart said. “That might sound
disappointing, but that was our Eureka moment. That’s exactly the
signature we expect with most distant objects in the universe.

“The universe is expanding, and as it expands, imagine light
traveling across vastness of space. As it’s traveling the universe,
expanding light is being stretched out,” Reichart said. “By the
time it gets to us, it has a longer wave length.”

This is so extreme, there’s no visible light left. The human
would not have seen it, Reichart said.

“Once we determined it was an extremely distant object, more
distant than any explosion before, we then announced it to the
world,” he said.

That announcement came Monday.

“This burst smashes the old distance record by 500 million light
years.”

For Reichart, the process of even discovering something like
that started about a week before the burst.

That’s when UNC received a new infrared camera needed to find an
object like this.

When they finally got the camera, Haislip was the only student
around to get acquainted with it.

Just a week later, history was made.

Reichart said he actually anticipated this kind of finding since
he was a graduate student in 1999.

He and his advisor “predicted the existence of these. We’d find
these extremely useful … we don’t know that much about the very
early universe.”

“There will be very careful observation. We will use them to
study the early universe in ways that haven’t been done yet.”

Reichart said they will find more things like this, but it may
take one or more years.

“We were very lucky,” he said. “We will keep trying.”

He said they knew immediately they had seen something
unique.

“It was exciting to me and (Haislip) knew what was going on,
too. It pointed to everything we were looking for. A needle in a
haystack. High fives all around.”

This particular burst was named GRB 050904 for the date it was
detected.

Reichart was born in Warren and is a 1991 graduate of Bradford
Area High School.

He is a son of Paul Reichart and Myra Reichart, formerly of
Bradford.