Gamma-ray bursts, or GRBs, are pretty much the ultimate explosions: Catastrophic releases of energy that can be many, many billions of times brighter than the Sun. They explode with such power that we can see some clear across the observable Universe! They can be separated into two categories: short GRBs, which last from a few milliseconds to a few seconds, and long GRBs, which can be several minutes in duration. Over the years we’ve learned that short GRBs are caused when two superdense neutron stars collide and collapse into a black hole , sending out a huge but extremely brief pulse of high-energy radiation. A long GRB occurs when, at the end of its life, a massive star’s core collapses and forms a black hole ; under some conditions the collapse launches out a pair of death rays, mind-crushing beams of energy that blast their way out of the star and create the high-energy gamma rays we see.…