The Biggest Bangs: Mystery of Gamma-Ray Bursts - Jonathan I. Katz

Description: The Biggest Bangs The Mystery of Gamma-Ray Bursts, The Most Violent Explosions in the Universe by Jonathan I. Katz Oxford University Press, 2002, First Edition, 0195145704, Hardcover, Dust Jacket, Fine/Fine condition, no marks, no underlining, no highlighting, like new condition. 218 pages. GAMMA-RAY BURSTS ARE THE MOST VIOLENT EVENTS SINCE THE BIRTH of the universe. hey are about ten times more energetic than the most powerful supernovas. At their peak, gamma-ray bursts are the brightest objects in space, about 100,000 times brighter than an entire galaxy And yet until recently these titanic eruptions were the most mysterious events in astronomy. In The Biggest Bangs, astrophysicist Jonathan Katz offers a fascinating account of the scientific quest to unravel the mystery of these incredible phenomena. With an eye for colorful detail and a talent for translating scientific jargon into plain English, Katz ranges from the accidental discovery of gamma-ray bursts (by a Cold War satellite system monitoring the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty) to the frustrating but ultimately successful efforts to localize these bursts in distant galaxies. He describes the theories, the equipment (the most recent breakthrough was made with a telescope you could carry under your arm), and the pioneers who have finally begun to explain these strange events. And along the way, he offers important lessons about science itself, arguing that "small science" is as valuable as institutionalized "big science," that observations are more the product of advances in technology than of theory, and that theory is only "the concentrated essence of experiment." With the advent of the space age a mere forty years ago, we have grown used to strangeness in the universe and confident in science's ability to explain it. In The Biggest Bangs, Jonathan Katz shows that there are still wonders out there that exceed the bounds of our imagination and defy our ability to understand them. JONATHAN I. KATZ earned his Ph.D. at Cornell University at the age of twenty-two. A professor of physics at Washington University in St. Louis, he has worked on problems as diverse as X-ray stars, earthquakes, the fracture of glass, and gamma-ray bursts. JACKET DESIGN BY KATHLEEN M. LYNCH JACKET ILLUSTRATION: The afterglow of the gamma-ray burst of February 28, 1997, and its host galaxy. The large white patch is the afterglow itself; below it and to the right is the galaxy in which it occurred. This image was obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope in visible light, but the colors in the reproduction indicate the brightness (from brightest to faintest, white, red, yellow, green, blue, and purple), rather than actual color, which was not measured (Space Telescope Science Institute). CONTENTS Preface ix Introduction 1 1. Vela 3 2. Detectors 12 3. Where Are They? 21 4. What Are They? 29 5. Compactness 40 6. The Large Magellanic Cloud 50 7. False Lines 60 8. False Light 70 9. The Copernican Dilemma 82 10. Soft Gamma Repeaters 94 11. BATSE 106 12. The Great Debate 116 13. The Theorists' Turn 126 14. Afterglows 139 15. A Supernova Connection? 152 16. The Holy Grail 162 17. The End of the Beginning 178 Afterword 181 Appendix. Did a Gamma-ray Burst Kill the Dinosaurs? Will a Burst Kill Us? 185 Glossary 189 Sources 197 Index 209 nthdegree books

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