October 17, 1996
 

Cosmic gamma ray bursts are powerful flashes of gamma-ray energy that occur at unpredictable times and in unpredictable locations in the sky. Their origins are still a mystery some thirty years after their discovery. The Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE), currently operating aboard NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory was designed and built by scientists and engineers from Marshall's Space Sciences Laboratory to learn more about these enigmatic bursts of energy from space.

This week (October 14), the science from BATSE was the subject of a three-day series on NPR's StarDate Program, produced by the McDonald Observatory in Texas. The first program talked about the ever changing gamma-ray sky, and how it appears so very different from the sky we're used to seeing with our eyes. On the second day, the enigmatic gamma-ray bursts were presented, with a possible explanation for their origins provided in the third program.

With permission of StarDate and its producer Damond Beddingfield, the following audio versions (au format and wav format) and scripts of Stardate are provided. The audio files are 1MByte each and run approximately 2 minutes.
Monday October 14

• Gamma-Ray Sky.au
• Text Script

Tuesday October 15

• Gamma-Ray Bursts.au
• Text Script

Wednesday October 16

• Noisy Mergers.au
• Text Script

For more information on Cosmic Gamma Ray Bursts, please contact