A Decades-Long Mystery About Colossal Explosions In Space

Gamma-ray bursts are mysterious. Aside from creating giant green rage monsters, they also contribute to gamma-ray bursts, or GRBs, the biggest explosions in the universe. GRBs have long been a mystery, but now scientists have a sense for what might cause these cosmic disruptions. Here’s more from MOTHERBOARD:

Now, a team led by Nuria Jordana-Mitjans, a PhD student at the University of Bath, has managed to capture light emitted just 90 seconds after the onset of GRB 141220A…. The observations represent the “earliest-ever detection” of polarization patterns embedded in optical light from a GRB’s “forward shock,” an energy wave that propagates out from the explosion to produce a long-lived afterglow, according to a study published on Wednesday in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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