Dying supergiant stars implicated in hours-long gamma-ray bursts
Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - 15:31
in Astronomy & Space
(Phys.org) —Three unusually long-lasting stellar explosions discovered by NASA's Swift satellite represent a previously unrecognized class of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Two international teams of astronomers studying these events conclude that they likely arose from the catastrophic death of supergiant stars hundreds of times larger than the sun.