Scientists shed light on oddball gamma rays from deep space

They thought they'd grokked short and long types.... then an awkward third kind came along

Once the data looked straightforward, at least in terms of bursts of gamma rays from outer space. The high-energy electromagnetic radiation was classified into two types: short bursts of less than a second, thought to come from two merging neutron stars in a binary system; and long bursts of a few seconds or more from the collapse of a massive star.…