Bagging bursts, swiftly

摘要

The gamma rays spat out by dying stars last an instant. Tony Reichhardt reports on the fast-response satellite that hopes to capture them. Ten years ago, science fiction could get away with speculating that gamma-ray (γ-ray) bursts were the exhausttrails of alien spaceships. And why not? No one had a sure explanation for these mysterious high-energy flashes, which briefly outshine everything in the γ-ray sky, and just as mysteriously flicker out, never to reappear. But the truth is equally dramatic. Most astronomers now believe these bursts are the dying gasps of massive imploding stars. Still, not all the mysteries have been solved. So a new NASA satellite called Swift is on the case, with launch scheduled for 8 November from Cape Canaveral inFlorida.