What really happened with GRB 080319B? NASA talks about the most intrinsically bright object ever observed in the universe
Burst Alert! March 19th was an exciting day for NASA. We know “why” it was special, but we don’t know “why why” it was special. They finally explain the why why today, and you can read all about it in Nature tomorrow. There was something amazing about GRB 080319B and the other cosmic bursts that NASA’s Swift satellite detected that day. (See NASA's animation of what they think happened). "Even by the standards of gamma-ray bursts, this burst was a whopper," says Swift lead scientist Neil Gehrels of NASA. "It blows away every gamma ray burst we’ve seen so far." Here’s the why (we'll get to the why why in a second):
