부산대학교 도서관

The long and the short of it The tidy classification system that divided γ-ray bursts (GRBs) into long-duration busts (lasting more than two seconds) and short may have had its day. The final nail in its coffin may be GRB 060614. Discovered on 14 June 2006 by the Burst Alert Telescope on-board the Swift satellite, this burst was long, at 102 seconds, but as reported in a clutch of papers in this issue, it has a number of properties, including the absence of an accompanying supernova, that were previously considered diagnostic of a 'short' GRB. The hunt is now on for a classification system to take account of the diversity now apparent in GRBs. In the accompanying News & Views, Bing Zhang suggests that the answer may be to adopt a Type I/Type II classification similar to that used for supernovae.