[Chaos-l] Minutes from May CHAOS meeting

[walter fowler]

UNC graduate student Melissa Nysewander presented some of her work on "dark" gamma ray bursts at the May meeting earlier this week.  It turns out that something like half of the observed gamma ray bursts have no counterpart in the visible spectrum (I.e. no "afterglow").  Some hypotheses are that the visible light is not in a tight jet or that something is scattering or absorbing it.  Melissa is trying to figure out exactly what is different about dark gamma ray bursts  and what that tells you about the source (most likely a type of supernova) and its environment (dust cloud or galaxy).  Turnout for the talk was a little light but several new faces were seen and the club now has several new members!  Walter
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