NEW hardcover

Flash: The Hunt for the Biggest Explosions in the Universe Schilling, Govert and GreenbergSlovin, Naomi

About three times a day our sky flashes with a powerful pulse of gamma ray bursts GRB, invisible to human eyes but not to astronomers instruments The sources of this intense radiation are likely to be emitting, within the span of seconds or minutes, more energy than the sun will in its entire 10 billion years of life Where these bursts originate, and how they come to have such incredible energies, is a mystery scientists have been trying to solve for three decades The phenomenon has resisted study the flashes come from random directions in space and vanish without trace until very recently In what could be called a cinematic conflation of Flash Gordon and The Hunt for Red October, Govert Schillings Flash: The Hunt for the Biggest Explosions in the Universe describes the exciting and everchanging field of GRB research Based on interviews with leading scientists, Flash provides an insiders account of the scientific challenges involved in unravelling the enigmatic nature of GRBs A science writer who has followed the drama from the very start, Schilling describes the ambition and jealousy, collegiality and competition, triumph and tragedy, that exists among those who have embarked on this recherche Govert Schilling is a Dutch science writer and astronomy publicist He is a contributing editor of Sky and Telescope magazine, and regularly writes for the news sections of Science and New Scientist Schilling is the astronomy writer for de Volkskrant, one of the largest national daily newspapers in The Netherlands, and frequently talks about the Universe on Dutch radio broadcasts He is the author of more than twenty popular astronomy books, and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles on astronomy