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Flash!: The Hunt for the Biggest Explosions in the Universe

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A few billion years after the Big Bang, a giant star ends its life in a spectacular explosion. In a fraction of a second, it releases more energy than an average star would in a 10 billion year lifetime, including tremendous gamma ray bursts traveling out at the speed of light. These gamma rays radiate out in all directions - some in the direction where the Milky Way galaxy will be born in a few hundred million years. By the time the first of these gamma ray photons have traveled half the distance to this new galaxy, our Sun is born with the Earth following some half a billion years later. Still these gamma rays are continuing on their journey. By the time they reach our Local Supercluster, dinosaurs are ruling the Earth. When they finally reach the outskirts of the Milky Way, the dinosaurs are long gone and the first human predecessors are walking on Earth. As these gamma ray photons approach the Pleiades, Galileo is looking through the first telescope. As they reach Alpha Centauri, a rocket is being launched from Cape Kennedy carrying a military satellite with a gamma ray detector on board. Four years later these gamma rays have completed their 10 billion year journey on July 2, 1967 and are detected by this satellite!
So begins the race to study these mysterious sources of intense gamma radiation and determine their origins. This is what "Flash" is all about. It documents the people who have devoted their lives since 1967 to understand the most powerful explosions in the universe, second only to the Big Bang itself, gamma ray burst. This is a very up-to-date and exciting book with a lot of the human side of scientific investigation described as well as a fair amount of good scientific information. I particularly liked chapter eleven, which has a beautifully written description of stellar evolution. This is a fascinating book on a relatively new phenomenon in this elegant universe in which we are such a small part. You are sure to want to learn more about these awesome sources of power after reading this book. You might want to get the video "Death Star" from PBS, which chronicles gamma ray burst in a way similar to this book.