1998/12/02 by K. Hurley, Hurley, K.
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/9812052
Review paper presented at the 3rd INTEGRAL Workshop, Taormina, Sicily, September 1998; to be published in Astrophysical Letters and Communications
arxiv created 1998/12/02 · openalex publication_date 1998/12/02 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
To anyone who has read a scientific journal or even a newspaper in the last six months, it might appear that cosmic gamma-ray bursts hold no more mysteries: they are cosmological, and possibly the most powerful explosions in the Universe. In fact, however, bursts remain mysterious in many ways. There is no general agreement upon the nature of the event which releases the initial energy. One burst at least appears to strain the energy budget of the merging neutron star model. There is evidence that another recent event may have come from a nearby supernova. Finally, while the number count statistics clearly show a strong deviation from the -3/2 power law expected for a Euclidean, homogeneous distribution, the distributions of some classes of bursts appear to follow a -3/2 power law rather closely. The recent data on bursts is reviewed, some of the mysteries discussed, and future experiments are outlined.