Related papers: Gamma-Ray Bursts: Old and New
My conviction is explained that none of the daily gamma-ray bursts comes from cosmic distances. In particular, nearby reflection nebulae have been mistaken for host galaxies.
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the ultimate cosmic lighthouses, capable of illuminating the universe at its earliest epochs. Could such events probe the properties of the first stars at z $\sim$ 20, the end of the cosmic Dark Ages? Previous…
The redshift where the first stars formed is an important and unknown milestone in cosmological structure formation. The evidence linking gamma ray bursts (GRBs) with star formation activity implies that the first GRBs occurred shortly…
The absence of optical afterglow at some gamma-ray bursts (so called dark bursts) requires analyses of physical features of this phenomenon. It is shown that such singularity can be connected with multiphoton processes of frequencies…
The duration of a gamma-ray burst (GRB) is a key indicator of its physics origin, with long bursts perhaps associated with the collapse of massive stars and short bursts with mergers of neutron stars.However, there is substantial overlap in…
Observations and models of GRBs are reviewed with an emphasis on the early phase of the burst. Recent revision of the early afterglow model is described.
It is now more than 40 years since the discovery of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and in the last two decades there has been major progress in the observations of bursts, the afterglows and their host galaxies. This recent progress has been…
One of the most exciting discoveries of recent years is a pair of gigantic gamma-ray emission regions, the so-called Fermi bubbles, above and below the Galactic center. The bubbles, discovered by the Fermi space telescope, extend up to…
Long $\rm \gamma$-ray bursts (GRBs) are produced by the dissipation of ultra-relativistic jets launched by newly-born black holes after the collapse of massive stars. Right after the luminous and highly variable $\gamma$-ray emission, the…
The observed spatial distribution of $\gamma-$ray bursts indicates that they probably originate at cosmological distances. At this distance scale their variability timescale and flux above MeV imply an initial optical-depth to pair…
Starburst galaxies have a highly increased star-formation rate compared to regular galaxies and inject huge amounts of kinetic power into the interstellar medium via supersonic stellar winds, and supernova explosions. Supernova remnants,…
Gamma-ray bursts are the most concentrated explosions in the Universe. They have been detected electromagnetically at energies up to tens of GeV, and it is suspected that they could be active at least up to TeV energies. It is also…
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…
When massive stars exhaust their fuel they collapse and often produce the extraordinarily bright explosions known as core-collapse supernovae. On occasion, this stellar collapse also powers an even more brilliant relativistic explosion…
We briefly discuss the theoretical implications of recent detections of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) by BSAX. Relativistic shock wave theories of fireball expansion are challenged by the wealth of X-ray, optical and radio data obtained after the…
Soft-gamma-ray repeaters (SGRs) are galactic X-ray stars that emit numerous short-duration (about 0.1 s) bursts of hard X-rays during sporadic active periods. They are thought to be magnetars: strongly magnetized neutron stars with…
The evidence for spectral features in gamma-ray bursts is summarized. As a guide for evaluating the evidence, the properties of gamma-ray detectors and the methods of analyzing gamma-ray spectra are reviewed. In the 1980's, observations…
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…
The present common view about GRB origin is related to cosmology. There are two evidences in favour of this interpretation. The first is connected with statistics, the second is based on measurements of the redshifts in the GRB optical…
Long-duration gamma-ray bursts are associated with the explosions of massive stars and are accordingly expected to reside in star-forming regions with molecular gas (the fuel for star formation). Previous searches for carbon monoxide (CO),…