Gamma Ray Bursts are Nascent Black Holes

tjgoodwin writes "A paper (PDF format) published in Nature shows, for the first time, that Gamma Ray Bursts are the result of a massive (> 10 solar masses) star collapsing to form a black hole. PPARC has a press release which includes a notable picture of a T. Rex glancing nervously over its shoulder at a supernova!"

T-rex

[Violet Null]

"...which includes a notable picture of a T. Rex glancing nervously over its shoulder at a supernova!"

My parents tell me about the days before they had time-travel journalism, but I have to say, I don't believe it.

Yeah right!

[Orre]

Yeah right! and beer glasses talk!

Re:Yeah right!

[Verne]

well, according to this article [slashdot.org] they at least tell you how full they are...

Well

[TheGreenLantern]

I'm sure Reed Richards and the rest of the Fantastic Four will be happy to hear this. Perhaps they can now develop shielding for the X-10 rocket ship that will finally be able to block those nasty Gamma Rays.

Oh wait, those were cosmic rays. And come to think of it, why they hell would you want to block them? Hell, who doesn't want cool super powers? Trust me kids, it's a blast.

Re:Well

[Drakin]

Hulk was made by gamma rays... you really want to be big, green and stupid?

Re:Well

[TheGreenLantern]

You got something against green?

Re:Well

[ckkatwork]

Two things:

1. If you think X11 sucks, you should have seen X10.

2. What about the effects on man-in-the-moon marigolds?

Seems the dot-com collapse is a bit widespread..

[billn]

The pattern of gamma ray bursts uses the same dispersion model of fleeing CEO's from massive (>10 billion shares) companies collapsing to form investor black holes.

Gravastars?

[pubudu]

I saw a special on PBS a while back that came to basically the same conclusion, that only a hypernova could produce enough energy for us to notice them at that distance. Is this paper simply more experimental verification?

Of course, my real question is whether the purported alternative to black holes, viz. gravastars (Gravitational Condensate Stars; described here [lanl.gov], with an associated /. story here [slashdot.org]), would do the same thing. It's my understanding that a gravastar would appear (almost?) identical to a black hole from the outside, and so ought to be able to produce this kind of phenomenon, but is it so? Would a star collapsing into a gravastar produce a gamma-ray burst? (I assume that, since they are different from black holes, the details of their formation would be different, as well--perhaps different enough to upset the whole thing.)

Ripped off in Australia last night?

[ynotds]

I saw a special on PBS a while back that came to basically the same conclusion, that only a hypernova ...

Sounds very much like the program [abc.net.au] I caught on (Australian) ABC TV last night, which made every effort to look like a very current local production. They definitely made use of some of the same simulations that are shown on the PPARC press release linked from the story.

However the narrator on our ABC was clearly out of his depth:

Scientists knew that all the elements that make up the universe - the galaxies, the planets, even the air we breathe and the bones in our bodies - were all first made inside stars.

... but the mystery is: if the stars make all the elements then what made the very first stars?

The answer has to lie in those cosmic Dark Ages of the dawn of time. What scientists have now realised is that the gamma ray bursts may be a way of seeing into those Dark Ages.

seemingly ignorant of an expert mentioning "heavier elements" while he, the narrator, must have been too busy trying to invent his own idiosynchratic creation mythology to take notice of the quotes he was supposed to be bracketing.

I already posted my lay thoughts on gravastars [slashdot.org] and the idea of hypernova added nothing to them.

Re:Ripped off in Australia last night?

[pubudu]

Sounds very much like the program [abc.net.au] I caught on (Australian) ABC TV last night, which made every effort to look like a very current local production. They definitely made use of some of the same simulations that are shown on the PPARC press release linked from the story.

I don't think it was the same program. The PBS program was produced by Nova; it was entitled Death Star [pbs.org]. A transcript is here [pbs.org]. I suspect that everyone uses the simulations provided by the researchers, rather than create their own from scratch without understanding the physics.

TRex caption

[finity]

I like the t-rex picture's caption: "Gamma Ray Burst Of Doom"!!!!! It sounds like a cheesy B movie.

Big discovery!

[DomoKun]

This is actually a big discovery, if completly true, scientists can now easily count the number of newly born black holes (or gravastars or whatever they are). Making it possible to estimate the total number of black holes in the universe, and if you combine this with the avarage mass of black holes, you can account for alot of darkmatter or not. *INAS*

Re:Big discovery!

[drudd]

Interestingly I just went to a colloquia on this very topic today...

While the current theories do involve accretion onto a black hole, the accretion rates necessary to power a GRB are very high (0.1 solar masses per second!). Several possible ways to get these kind of rates are with mergers of a black hole and a neutron star or white dwarf, or by having a red giant engulf its binary white dwarf, short circuiting the supernova track.

Now to answer your question: these black holes are formed from stars. The average mass of these objects are on the order of a few solar masses, and are also very rare (something like 1 every 10 million years in our galaxy). In short, black holes formed in this way are not even close to being significant contributors to dark matter.

Doug