Bing Li

All matter, from stars to humans, is built from particles that in the Standard Model are divided into two families. But there's a third, rare kind — particles that, when swapped, don't just exchange places but tie themselves into a knot, remembering the intertwining rather than the path.

In October 2022, the space-based detector GECAM-C caught the most powerful gamma-ray burst ever seen, GRB 221009A — an explosion that briefly became the brightest source of gamma rays in the sky. But the most interesting part came after: the instrument detected a series of additional flares, and one of them was record-breaking.