July 2, 1967: The discovery of GRBs

On July 2, 1967, the U.S.’s Vela 3 and 4 satellites, originally launched to monitor compliance with the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty by detecting weapons tests, accidentally detected fast and powerful flashes of high-energy photons, or gamma rays, from space. These events were later identified as gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) in a 1973 paper by LosContinue reading “July 2, 1967: The discovery of GRBs”
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