The Accidental Discovery
Once upon a time, before the dawn of the nuclear age, mankind was oblivious to the fact that bursts of very high-energy radiation regularly bombard the Earth. Since Earth’s atmosphere shields us from these cosmic bullets, we were oblivious to their presence. Then we penetrated the atmospheric shield with Earth-orbiting satellites. In the case of gamma ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the Universe, the discovery of the tell-tale gamma rays came by accident from a satellite that was looking down, rather than out.
With the discovery of the immense energy locked inside the atom and its potential as weaponry, there came the need to monitor nuclear testing by potential enemies. In the late 1960’s, The United States launched its VELA 4 satellites to circle the Earth and search for the nuclear tests of other countries. Underground nuclear tests can’t be directly detected, but the intense nuclear reactions they produce yield a by-product that can: light in its most energetic form, also known as gamma rays. After the first satellite was launched and turned on, its controllers were alarmed to find it reporting immediate detection of scattered gamma ray events!
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