The most powerful explosions in the universe may be shot out of a cannon. A long-term look at the brightest gamma-ray burst in the past 30 years suggests that the standard model of how these blasts work is flawed.
A new theory of how they work, dubbed the cannonball model, is challenging the traditional explanation, known as the fireball model.
Gamma-ray bursts, which were first discovered in the 1970s, appear to come from random spots in the sky about once per day. They can release more energy in a few seconds than the sun will in its expected 10-billion-year lifespan.
All this power could wreak havoc on Earth: gamma-ray bursts have been linked to mass extinctions, and may have catalysed genetic mutations that help life to diversify. But to understand how these flashes have shaped the cosmos, scientists need to understand exactly how they work.
These explosions are thought to happen when massive stars collapse into black holes, and when ultra-dense stars crash into each other and become one object. They then fade in a period known as the afterglow, during which they emit other kinds of radiation, such as X-rays. But the details of how they generate this radiation remain fuzzy.
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