Enlarge / Artist’s impression of GRB 211211A. The kilonova and gamma-ray burst is on the right.Aaron M. Geller/Northwestern/CIERA
A year ago, astronomers discovered a powerful gamma-ray burst (GRB) lasting nearly two minutes, dubbed GRB 211211A. Now that unusual event is upending the long-standing assumption that longer GRBs are the distinctive signature of a massive star going supernova. Instead, two independent teams of scientists identified the source as a so-called “kilonova,” triggered by the merger of two neutron stars, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature. Because neutron star mergers were assumed to only produce short GRBs, the discovery
→ Continue reading at Ars Technica