Craft hunts gamma-ray bursts

During its two-year mission, Swift is expected to pinpoint as many as 150 bursts. It is expected to take four months or more to activate and calibrate the instruments on board, at which point the spacecraft will begin serious work.

The problem with gamma-ray bursts is that they are also among the most fleeting cosmological events. Some last only milliseconds, while the longest went on for 100 seconds. Space scientists are not even certain what causes them. Speculation ranges from collisions between neutron stars, or even black holes. More adventurous theoreticians think the evaporation of a black hole might also cause a burst of gamma energy. The current favourite explanation is that they represent the death throes of the first generation of giant stars that formed shortly, in cosmological terms, after the Big Bang. The mission is a collaboration between NASA, the UK and Italy. —LAT-WP