The Brightest Explosions in the Universe

Every time a gamma-ray burst goes off, a black hole is born

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Neil Gehrels was chief of the Astroparticle Physics Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, as well as principal investigator of the Swift mission, project scientist for the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) and deputy project scientist for the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. He passed away in February 2017.

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SA Special Editions Vol 14 Issue 4sThis article was published with the title “The Brightest Explosions in the Universe” in SA Special Editions Vol. 14 No. 4s (), p. 92
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0904-92sp

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