re gamma ray bursters where are they in article radsr att access digex net prb access digex com pat writes what evidence indicates that gamma ray bursters are very far away their distribution is very isotropic and the intensity distribution crudely speaking indicates we re seeing an edge to the distribution given the enormous power i was just wondering what if they are quantum black holes or something like that fairly close by why would they have to be at galactic ranges now in the good old days before gro data it was thought the gamma bursters were neutron stars in the galaxy it was expected that gro would confirm this by either showing they were a local population within a few hundred light years or that they were in the galactic halo mechanism was not known but several plausible ones existed also to be fair it was noted that the brightest burster was probably in the lmc suggesting theorists might be wrong back then as the sun is not at the center of the galaxy a halo population should show anisotropy a local disk population is ruled out completely at this stage to avoid the anisotropy you have to push the halo out the energy then gets large the mechanism of getting ns out that far becomes questionable and we should start to see for example the andromeda s bursters the data is consistent with either a oort cloud distribution but only just but no one can think of a plausible source with the right spectrum or it can be a cosmological distances hence isotropy and the edge is the edge of the universe if at cosmological distances you need very high energy to detect and a very compact source for spectrum ergo a neutron star colliding with another neutron star or black hole even then getting the spectrum is very hard but conceivable if we know anything about physics at that level the bursters are not due to quantum black holes or cosmic strings wrong spectrum for one thing the situation is further complicated by recent claims that there are two classes of sources in the colliding ns they d actually probably fit relatively easily into the ns ns and ns bh collision scenarios respectively my own pet theory is that it s flying saucers entering hyperspace but the reason i am asking is that most everyone assumes that they are colliding nuetron stars or spinning black holes i just wondered if any mechanism could exist and place them closer in if you can think of one remember to invite me to stockholm steinn sigurdsson lick observatory steinly lick ucsc edu standard disclaimer the laws of gravity are very very strict and you re just bending them for your own benefit b b
