Loading...Gamma Rays are a pretty interesting part of the electromagnetic spectrum, not only because they sound like something Super Man would shoot out of his eyeballs. Being the highest frequency type of light on the spectrum, gamma rays have a sort of shroud mystery around them, and that was certainly the case back during the Cold War. In today’s featured video, by Crash Course, (in their astronomy series run and hosted by Phil Plait) you will be introduced to the interesting story of gamma ray bursts, and how they were the greatest astronomy mysteries for a good couple decades.
The story starts in the Cold War period, when both the United States and Russia were silently going after each other without starting a nuclear war. While on a mission to try to detect Russia’s nukes on the other side of the moon, (hey, it was the cold war) some scientist discovered these weird pulses of gamma rays. The subsequent race to find out not only what the pulses are but why they happen is a fascinating tale, as Phil points out, almost as interesting as the gamma ray bursts themselves.