Gamma-Ray Bursts - The Second Revolution

TL;DR

Gamma-ray bursts are extremely luminous, relativistic phenomena with a complex history of discovery, now understood to involve black holes, neutron star mergers, and potential cosmological applications, following two major scientific revolutions in understanding.

Contribution

This paper reviews the two major revolutions in GRB understanding, highlighting their origins, observational breakthroughs, and implications for astrophysics and cosmology.

Findings

GRBs are isotropically distributed, indicating a cosmological origin.

Discovery of afterglows confirmed the fireball model.

GRBs involve relativistic motion at velocities exceeding 0.9999c.

Abstract

Gamma-ray bursts GRBs are among the most mysterious astronomical phenomenon ever discovered. Unlike most astronomical discoveries which were explained within weeks or months after their initial discovery, GRBs remain a puzzle for more than thirty years. During the last decade our understanding of GRBs has undergone two major revolutions. First, BATSE discovered that GRBs are distributed isotropically over the sky and thereby demonstrated their cosmological origin. The second revolution tool place more recently when BeppoSAX discovered GRB afterglow. This confirmed the fireball model and led to a wealth of observational data, some of which has not been fully understood yet. The emerging picture is that GRBs are the most luminous objects and the most relativistic objects ever discovered: (i) GRBs involve relativistic motion at a velocity of 0.9999c or larger. (ii) Most current GRB models involve the formation of a black hole in one way or another. (iii) If binary neutron star mergers are the sources of GRBs then GRBs are also associated with gravitational radiation signals. Finally, (iv) as cosmological power-houses that are observed to high red-shift GRBs might be used to measure cosmological parameters and to teach us about the epoch of galaxy formation.