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To appear as bright in our sky as they do, and still be at such extreme distances, GRBs must put out prodigious quantities of energy. (Read more about the relationship between energy of a source and its the distance in Gamma Ray Bursts I, another Interactive on this same website). So much energy must be produced that GRBs appeared to dwarf the most energetic cosmic event known: the death of a massive star known as a supernova explosion. Astronomers had a hard enough time making the detailed physics of a supernova work out; understanding what kind of physics were needed, to produce an explosion a thousand times more powerful, presented them with a real dilemma.
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