Talk:GRB 990123
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[edit] Recorded as it happend ?
I have small problem with this article since as it referes to the event beeing "recordet as it happend". I don't know a lot about radiation, but it seems to me, that it (it's light, or whatever they recorde) could not travel 9,000 million light years instatainiusly. It seems obvius, that the event itself must have taken place ... a very long time ago.
If somebode knows more about Astronomy than me, please correct the article or me. -
Well, ok, I've avoided this article but ROSTE-I was part of my dissertation. And yeah this article is messed up. 990123 was not the first optical afterglow of a GRB found as claimed here, but it was the first where optical light was detected at the same time as the gamma ray radiation. The optical afterglows which had been seen before this were fairly generic -- any large and energetic enough explosion will make a huge shockwave that will glow as it expands and cools. The prompt optical flash seen in 990123 was diagnostic of the physical processes involved in the explosion itself, separate from the more generic afterglow, and was not predicted by many models. (It was predicted by at least one, which had been submitted but not published at the time of our discovery. We received a letter of thanks form the author for confirming his theory.) Maybe one day I'll clean up this article . . . Mk421 06:53, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
