Gamma-ray bursts, the biggest bangs in the cosmos since the big bang itself, were unexpectedly common in the early universe. This might tell us something crucial about the conditions that trigger these titanic fireballs.
Matthew Kistler of Ohio State University, Columbus, and his team examined 44 long-duration GRBs. The bursts are thought to happen in massive stars, so their frequency should depend on the rate at which those stars form. However, Kistler’s team was surprised to find that when the universe was one-fifth of its current size,
