Wei-Hua Lei

The Einstein Probe space telescope detected a celestial storm: after a short (0.4-second) gamma-ray burst — a cosmic lightning bolt — came a long roll of X-ray thunder. It lasted nearly 10 minutes. This is the first direct proof that such explosions leave a lingering X-ray afterglow.

Light fades like a campfire when you stop adding wood. Gamma-ray bursts, the brightest explosions in the Universe, have their own rhythm of fading. Astronomers took 85 such bursts caught by the Swift satellite and looked at how fast their brightness drops. Inside a burst hides a black hole that greedily sucks in matter.

In a distant galaxy, at a distance that light takes 11 billion years to cross, something flashed. The Einstein Probe X-ray telescope caught a brief, needle-prick-like burst: it lasted only a few dozen seconds.