Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Not the "Big Bang" but a Really Large Bang

The Dark Side of Nature: the Crime was Almost Perfect - VLT Uncovers New Way to Form Black Hole | SpaceRef
"Nature has again thrown astronomers for a loop. Just when they thought they understood how gamma-ray bursts formed, they have uncovered what appears to be evidence for a new kind of cosmic explosion. These seem to arise when a newly born black hole swallows most of the matter from its doomed parent star.
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), the most powerful explosions in the Universe, signal the formation of a new black hole and come in two flavours, long and short ones. In recent years, international efforts have shown that long gamma-ray bursts are linked with the explosive deaths of massive stars ..."