Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2003-06-17
Nature.423:847-850,2003
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
19 pages, 3 figures
Scientific paper
10.1038/nature01750
Over the past five years evidence has mounted that long-duration (> 2 s) gamma-ray bursts (GRBs)--the most brilliant of all astronomical explosions--signal the collapse of massive stars in our Universe. This evidence was originally based on the probable association of one unusual GRB with a supernova, but now includes the association of GRBs with regions of massive star formation in distant galaxies, the appearance of supernova-like 'bumps' in the optical afterglow light curves of several bursts and lines of freshly synthesized elements in the spectra of a few X-ray afterglows. These observations support, but do not yet conclusively demonstrate, the idea that long-duration GRBs are associated with the deaths of massive stars, presumably arising from core collapse. Here we report evidence that a very energetic supernova (a hypernova) was temporally and spatially coincident with a GRB at redshift z = 0.1685. The timing of the supernova indicates that it exploded within a few days of the GRB, strongly suggesting that core-collapse events can give rise to GRBs, thereby favouring the 'collapsar' model.
Andersen Michael I.
Castro Cerón José María
Castro-Tirado Alberto J.
den Heuvel Edward P. J. van
Fruchter Andrew S.
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