Related papers: A Burst of Speculation
We examine the possibility that gamma-ray bursts arise from sources in the Oort comet cloud, basing most of our arguments on accepted models for the formation and spatial distribution of the cloud. We identify three severe problems with…
Whatever the ultimate energy source of gamma-ray bursts turns out to be, the resulting sequence of physical events is likely to lead to a fairly generic, almost unavoidable scenario: a relativistic fireball that dissipates its energy after…
Air shower experiments have detected cosmic ray events of energies upto 300 EeV. Most likely these cosmic rays have originated from compact objects. Their exact sources are yet to be identified. It has been suggested before that gamma ray…
In almost any scenario for 'cosmological' gamma-ray bursts (and in many models where they originate in our own Galaxy), the initial energy density is so large that the resulting relativistic plasma expands with $v\sim c$ producing a blast…
The motions of comets and neutron stars have been integrated over five billion years in the Galactic potential to determine a gamma-ray burst distribution, presuming that bursts are the result of interactions between these two families of…
We calculate the spectrum of blast wave models of gamma-ray burst sources, for various assumptions about the magnetic field density and the relativistic particle acceleration efficiency. For a range of physically plausible models we find…
The little we do know of the physical conditions in gamma-ray bursters makes them conducive to the acceleration of high-energy cosmic rays, especially if they are at cosmological distances. We find that, with the observed statistics and…
We present an internal shock model with external characteristics for explaining the complicated light curves of gamma-ray bursts. Shocks produce gamma-rays in the interaction between a precessing beam of relativistic particles and the…
We describe observational evidence and theoretical calculations which support the high velocity neutron star model of gamma-ray bursts. We estimate the energetic requirements in this model, and discuss possible energy sources. we also…
Relativistic flows resulting from sudden explosive events upscatter ambient interstellar photons of local radiation fields. For Lorentz factor $ > 100$ and dense optical - UV radiation fields the emergent signal is a typical gamma ray…
As long as there is no distance indicator to the sources of gamma-ray bursts all possible sources which are isotropically distributed should remain under consideration. This is why the Oort cloud of comets is kept on the list. We use the…
Fast radio bursts appear to exhibit large dispersion measures, typically exceeding any expected galactic interstellar contribution, especially along the moderate to high-galactic-latitude directions in which such events have been most often…
We consider a speculative model for gamma-ray bursts (GRB), which predicts that the total kinetic energy in the ejected matter is less than the total energy in the gamma rays. There is also secondary energy in X-rays, which are emitted…
We investigate the possibility that gamma-ray bursts originate in a concentric spherical shell with a given average redshift and find that this is indeed compatible with the data from the third BATSE (3B) catalog. It is also shown that…
The blast-wave model for gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) has been called into question by observations of spectra from GRBs that are harder than can be produced through optically thin synchrotron emission. If GRBs originate from the collapse of…
If gamma-ray bursts originate in our Galaxy, they probably involve violent disturbances in the magnetospheres of neutron stars. Any event of this kind is likely to trigger the sudden expulsion of magnetic flux and plasma at relativistic…
We investigate the configurations consisting of massive, dense and hot tori around stellar mass Kerr black holes as possible sources of energy for the gamma ray bursts in cosmological hypothesis of their origin. We limit parameters of our…
The radiation observed by blazars is believed to originate from the transformation of bulk kinetic energy of relativistic jets into random energy. A simple way to achieve this is to have an intermittent central power source, producing…
Gamma-ray bursts are short-lived, luminous explosions at cosmological distances, thought to originate from relativistic jets launched at the deaths of massive stars. They are among the prime candidates to produce the observed cosmic rays at…
Gamma-ray bursts are transient events from beyond the solar system. Besides the allure of their mysterious origin, bursts are physically fascinating because they undoubtedly require exotic physics. Optical transients coincident with burst…