June 22: Alien space wars and antimatter comets are but two of the more exotic explanations that have been proffered in the last three decades for the flashes of high-energy radiation known as gamma-ray bursts that have appeared sporadically in the cosmic night, tantalizing and frustrating astronomers.

An only slightly more prosaic theory has taken hold among astronomers in recent years: that these violent flashes are the yowls of giant stars imploding, perhaps into black holes, the inky gravitational sinks that swallow light and all else.


Now there is evidence that those astronomers are right, at least about some of the bursts. On March 29 a gamma-ray burst was detected that went off unusually near Earth a mere two billion light-years away prompting a deluge of observations that discerned the unmistakeable hint of a supernova explosion, the cataclysm in which a massive star ends its life, in the debris of the burst.

“There should no longer be doubt in anybody’s mind’’ that gamma-ray bursts and supernovas are connected, said Dr. Thomas Matheson, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astophysics in Massachusets. Bureau Report