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yeah they occur approximately once per

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day

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brief intense powerful explosions of

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gamma-ray radiation of the likes not

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seen since the big bang

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they're called gamma-ray bursts and

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scientists are somewhat mystified as to

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their cause

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do they signal the birth of a black hole

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in a massive stellar explosion are they

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the product of two colliding neutron

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stars or is there something else that

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prompts this intriguing phenomenon with

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its launch into low earth orbit in

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november 2004

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scientists have a dedicated tool with

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which to probe the gamma-ray burst

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mystery before swift launch to give you

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an example the satellite that actually

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saw the long burst

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it took at them eight hours to to go and

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look at that at that burst swift can do

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this in you know less than a minute

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named after the bird able to quickly

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snatch insects as it flies the swift

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observatory is agile quickly pointing

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its instruments at gamma-ray bursts and

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relaying burst locations to the ground

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within seconds swift can see usually i

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mean on average 100 births per year the

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number of birds that actually exist in

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the universe that we think are actually

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happening in the universe is of course

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much higher we think we actually see

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only maybe like one in a thousand this

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quick response is achieved by a

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complement of three on-board instruments

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the largest the burst alert telescope or

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bat can view approximately a sixth of

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the entire sky at one time

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the x-ray and the ultraviolet optical

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telescopes enable high precision x-ray

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and optical positions and spectra to be

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determined

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swift burst alerts allow both

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space-based and ground-based telescopes

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around the world to observe a burst

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afterglow immediately after its

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detection

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swift doesn't just look at gamma ray

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bursts and that's all they do they study

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a very large array of science which has

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come as an added bonus really to the

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mission they've basically for example

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they detected the first x-ray

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flash coming from a star that was just

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about to explode an international effort

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swift has observed some 450 births since

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its launch and provided the most

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comprehensive study of gamma-ray burst

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afterglows to date swift is really

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providing us with

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a list of discoveries that just keep on

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growing and

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for a satellite or for a mission that

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size which had initially

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had a very focused goal which was gamma

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ray burst um this is the uh you know the

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the gift that keeps on giving for more

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information on the swift mission log on