.: Common Misconceptions/Problems

           A problem that arises when attempting to study these bursts lies in the how fast the bursts come.  Each burst comes at such a rapid rate and vanishes just as quickly, causing scientists to miss many of them completely.  Some scientists have compared this to "trying to catch all of the flashes of every firefly on a summer night, using an ordinary camera.  Another large problem that scientists face is the inability to recreate these extreme events in their own laboratories.  This poses a problem, as the scientists cannot claim that they truly understand what is going on, as they cannot recreate the events on their own.  For now, scientists know as much as our current perception of physics allows them to know.  In order to fully understand these bursts, a new type of physics may be required.
          There were several misconceptions about gamma-ray bursts once military scientists were convinced that the bursts were being emitted from space rather than from activities conducted by humans. They first came across the bursts originally seeking gamma rays released from nuclear bombs and once these gamma rays were found, some were briefly worried that our enemies found means to test these bombs in space, due to the fact that the gamma rays were coming from space.  Another very brief suspicion was that perhaps the bursts were produced by extraterrestrials. Yet these findings were made public in 1973 and astronomers first believed the gamma-ray bursts to be variations of the X-ray bursts that could occur on neutron stars in close binary systems.
             One great misconception is that the gamma-ray bursts were thought by some to be coming from within the Milky Way Galaxy. This is due to the fact that the X-ray bursts, which the gamma-ray bursts were thought to be associated with, all came from the concentrated disk of the Milky Way. However, in April of 1991, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory was launched and it detected bursts from far outside of the Milky Way Galaxy which meant the bursts had to have enormous energy for means to be detected across the universe.
          Another misconception is that the short gamma-ray bursts, which only last less than a few seconds, came from supernovae. This was however proved false in 2005 and led scientists to hypothesize that they could be caused by a collision in a binary system that contains either a black hole and a neutron star or two neutron stars.
          Finally, a possible misconception that some may have is the thought that gamma-ray bursts are something that can be regularly seen with the naked eye.  Some may compare it to a meteor or asteroid citing.  While this very well may occur, the odds of a person being able to see a gamma-ray burst without any type of forewarning or scientific tools are very slim.  Also, since the bursts appear and vanish almost instantaneously, it is near impossible to see, even if you are looking for it.

(A depiction of what the Big Bang may have looked like.)