ASTRONOMERS have proved that some cosmic gamma-ray bursts are produced by supernovae triggered when the cores of massive stars collapse.
A link had long been suspected, and in 1998 a supernova was seen days after a gamma-ray burst in the same region of sky. But no one had managed to prove the link until now. On 29 March, observers recorded a burst dubbed GRB 030329. On 6 April, theorists at the Technion Institute of Technology in Israel and CERN in Geneva predicted there would be signs of a supernova in the visible light and infrared spectra on 8 April (
