Editor's Summary
21 December 2006
The long and the short of it
The tidy classification system that divided 
-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.
News and Views: Astrophysics: A burst of new ideas
Gigantic cosmological -ray bursts have fallen into a dichotomy of long and short bursts, each with a very different origin. The discovery of an oddball burst calls for a rethink of that classification.
Bing Zhang
doi:10.1038/4441010a
Letter: A new 
-ray burst classification scheme from GRB 060614
N. Gehrels, J. P. Norris, S. D. Barthelmy, J. Granot, Y. Kaneko, C. Kouveliotou, C. B. Markwardt, P. Mészáros, E. Nakar, J. A. Nousek, P. T. O'Brien, M. Page, D. M. Palmer, A. M. Parsons, P. W. A. Roming, T. Sakamoto, C. L. Sarazin, P. Schady, M. Stamatikos & S. E. Woosley
doi:10.1038/nature05376
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (383K)
Letter: No supernovae associated with two long-duration -ray bursts
Johan P. U. Fynbo, Darach Watson, Christina C. Thöne, Jesper Sollerman, Joshua S. Bloom, Tamara M. Davis, Jens Hjorth, Páll Jakobsson, Uffe G. Jørgensen, John F. Graham, Andrew S. Fruchter, David Bersier, Lisa Kewley, Arnaud Cassan, José María Castro Cerón, Suzanne Foley, Javier Gorosabel, Tobias C. Hinse, Keith D. Horne, Brian L. Jensen, Sylvio Klose, Daniel Kocevski, Jean-Baptiste Marquette, Daniel Perley, Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz, Maximilian D. Stritzinger, Paul M. Vreeswijk, Ralph A. M. Wijers, Kristian G. Woller, Dong Xu & Marta Zub
doi:10.1038/nature05375
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (163K) | Supplementary information
Letter: An enigmatic long-lasting -ray burst not accompanied by a bright supernova
M. Della Valle, G. Chincarini, N. Panagia, G. Tagliaferri, D. Malesani, V. Testa, D. Fugazza, S. Campana, S. Covino, V. Mangano, L. A. Antonelli, P. D'Avanzo, K. Hurley, I. F. Mirabel, L. J. Pellizza, S. Piranomonte & L. Stella
doi:10.1038/nature05374
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (205K) | Supplementary information
Letter: A novel explosive process is required for the -ray burst GRB 060614
A. Gal-Yam, D. B. Fox, P. A. Price, E. O. Ofek, M. R. Davis, D. C. Leonard, A. M. Soderberg, B. P. Schmidt, K. M. Lewis, B. A. Peterson, S. R. Kulkarni, E. Berger, S. B. Cenko, R. Sari, K. Sharon, D. Frail, D.-S. Moon, P. J. Brown, A. Cucchiara, F. Harrison, T. Piran, S. E. Persson, P. J. McCarthy, B. E. Penprase, R. A. Chevalier & A. I. MacFadyen
doi:10.1038/nature05373
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (237K) | Supplementary information
