Recent Gamma Ray bursts

Kryon has told us to watch for continuing gamma ray bursts to arrive here
in order to increase the amount of energy stored for our use as more and
more of us chose ascension...however, as you can see, scientists really
don't want to give up the big bang theory...even as the data look more and
more suspect.

Kathy

May 9, 1998 | Volume 153 | Number 19 - Science News

Gamma-Ray Burst Makes Quite a Bang

by R. Cowen

For one brief moment, long ago in a far-away galaxy, a titanic explosion
poured a torrent of gamma rays into space. Some 12 billion years later --
Dec. 14, 1997 -- this flash of radiation reached Earth.

Astronomers are calling this gamma-ray burst "the most powerful explosion
since the Big Bang." While that may be hyperbole, researchers have
calculated that this cosmic flash packed 100 times more energy than a
supernova explosion. Until now, researchers had considered supernovas the
most energetic phenomenon known.

For the second or two that it lasted, "this burst was as luminous as all
the rest of the entire universe," says S. George Djorgovski of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, a member of the team
reporting the finding in the May 7 Nature. The group calculated the energy
from the brightness of the burst and its afterglow, as well as the distance
of the host galaxy from Earth -- 12 billion light-years.

Gamma rays from the burst were detected by the Dutch-Italian BeppoSAX
satellite and NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. Then came a crucial
step in finding the host galaxy. BeppoSAX also recorded an X-ray afterglow,
part of the smoldering fireball that lingers after gamma rays have
vanished.

A few hours later, using the afterglow as a guide, Jules P. Halpern of
Columbia University and his colleagues detected a visible-light afterglow,
they report in the May 7 Nature. Two weeks later, Djorgovski's team used
the Keck II Telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea to find the host galaxy.

This marks the second time that astronomers have measured the distance to a
galaxy that hosted a gamma-ray burst (SN: 5/17/97, p. 305).

These observations settle the long-standing debate over whether most
gamma-ray bursts originate within our galaxy or far beyond it, some
astronomers say. However, several of the findings call into question a
popular theory in which bursts are generated when two dense stars, known as
neutron stars, collide and merge.

Dale A. Frail of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, N.M.,
notes that to generate the energy associated with the Dec. 14 burst,
virtually the entire mass of the neutron stars had to have been converted
into gamma rays -- an unlikely situation.

Frail told Science News that data from another burst, detected March 29,
may prove equally damning for the theory. For the first time, researchers
glimpsed an afterglow at radio wavelengths before finding one in visible
light.

That sequence suggests that the burst originated from a place containing
lots of dust, which blocks visible light but is transparent to radio waves.
Stellar nurseries are rich in dust, and previous studies have hinted that
several other bursts originated in star-forming locales. Neutron stars
"cannot merge within star-forming regions," asserts Bohdan Paczyn´ski of
Princeton University. He explains that during the 100 million years or so
that it would take for neutron stars to form and merge, they would have
migrated from their birthplace.

Paczyn´ski favors another model -- described in the Feb. 10 Astrophysical
Journal Letters -- in which a massive, short-lived star undergoes a
"hypernova" explosion, hurling a shock wave into space at nearly the speed
of light.

>From Science News, Vol. 153, No. 19, May 9, 1998, p. 292.
Copyright Ó 1998 by Science Service.

References:

Halpern, J.P., et al. Optical afterglow of the g -ray burst of 14 December
1997. Nature 393(May 7):41.

Kulkarni, S.R., S.G. Djorgovski, et al. 1998. Identification of a host
galaxy at redshift z = 3.42 for the g -ray burst of 14 December 1997.
Nature 393(May 7):35.

Paczynski, B. 1998. Are gamma-ray bursts in star-forming regions?
Astrophysical Journal Letters 494(February 10):L45.