Into the Belly of the Beast
Into the Belly of the Beast
This chapter discusses the definition, emission, and central engine of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Before the afterglow era, GRBs were essentially defined by observations of their high-energy emission. The landscape of such observations—the light curves and spectra of the events—exhibits at once great diversity and elements of commonality that bind different events together. GRBs are like fingerprints: no two are alike, but they share common properties. Those common elements provide strong constraints both on the nature of the “engine” that supplies the energy to the event and the physical processes that drive the emission we see. Since the 1990s, GRB monitors in space have observed more than one hundred GRBs. Since 2004, the NASA GRB satellite called Swift has been discovering GRBs at a rate of about two per week.
Keywords: gamma-ray bursts, GRBs, Swift satellite, high-energy emission, NASA GRB satellite, afterglow
Princeton Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
