High‐Redshift Absorption Lines Show Convincingly that Gamma‐Ray Bursters Are Very Far Away
JUL 01, 1997
All of a sudden the long debate is over. Gamma‐ray bursters really do live halfway across the cosmos. Now we know that they are, for brief moments, the most luminous objects in the universe.
DOI: 10.1063/1.881802
Last month in these pages we wrote, “Gamma‐ray astronomers expect that [the 28 February gamma‐ray burst] is but the first of many GRBs that will soon be revealing much more of themselves…” (page 17). “Soon” turned out to be an understatement. On 8 May, just as we were going to press, the new Italian‐Dutch BeppoSAX satellite recorded another GRB, one that will surely make its way into the textbooks.
© 1997. American Institute of Physics
