Stellary Starry Universe

 

Gamma-ray bursts are by far the brightest and most powerful explosions in the Universe, second only to the Big Bang itself. So it might seem a bit surprising that a group of them has gone missing.

A single gamma-ray burst (GRB) can easily outshine an entire galaxy containing hundreds of billions of stars. Powerful telescopes can see them from clear across the Universe. And because the deeper you look into space, the farther back in time you see, astronomers should be able to see GRBs from the time when the very first stars were forming after the Big Bang.

Yet they don’t. Gamma-ray bursts from that early epoch seem to be missing, and astronomers are wondering where they are.

“This is one of the biggest questions in the gamma-ray business,” says astrophysicist Neil Gehrels of the Goddard Space Flight Center. “It’s something we’re going to be talking a lot about today at the GRB Symposium.” …

Source: Nasa Science – click here or title for full article