ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY PRESS NOTICE Date: 11 December 2002 Ref. PN 02/31 For immediate release Issued by: RAS Press Officer Dr Jacqueline Mitton Phone: +44 ((0)1223) 564914 Fax: +44 ((0)1223) 572892 E-mail: jmitton@dial.pipex.com RAS web: http://www.ras.org.uk ************************** PRESTIGIOUS EUROPEAN AWARD FOR GAMMA-RAY BURST RESEARCH TEAM The European Union's prestigious Descartes Prize for research has been awarded to an astrophysics group for the first time. UK astronomers, Professor Sir Martin Rees of Cambridge University and Dr Nial Tanvir of the University of Hertfordshire, are among the consortium of European researchers awarded the prize for their ground-breaking work on gamma-ray bursts - the biggest explosions in the universe. The Descartes Prize is awarded annually by the European Commission for outstanding research through transnational collaboration. The winning astrophysics team, led by Dr Edward Van den Heuval of the University of Amsterdam, will use their award of 0.5 million euros (approximately equivalent to £0.3 million or $0.5 million) to develop new scientific instruments for furthering the study of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). The GRB team shared the 1-million euro prize with a medical project on multiple sclerosis, after beating off stiff competition from 8 other finalists working in a wide range of medical and scientific subjects. The successful astrophysics team was at the forefront of dramatic progress in understanding gamma-ray bursts in 1997-98. GRBs were discovered in the late 1960s, but by the mid 1990s it was still unclear where they came from or even how far away they originate. The reason for this was that GRBs had only been detected as short, rare flashes of high-energy gamma radiation, which offered few clues to their origin. The critical breakthroughs came about when the Italian/Dutch X-ray satellite BeppoSAX made the first observations of longer-lived x-ray "afterglows" - the fading embers of GRBs. Very timely observations with ground based telescopes also found visible afterglows, which ultimately led to the distances of the objects producing gamma-ray bursts being measured for the first time. The early follow-up observations were led mainly by the late Prof Jan van Paradijs of Amsterdam University, although they included contributions from observers in many other countries, notably the UK, Italy, Denmark, Spain and the US. The researchers found that GRBs are extremely violent explosions occurring in remote galaxies. Their peak output is so immense that it amounts to more than a billion billion times the power of the Sun. Whilst this enormous luminosity exceeds all expectations, it turns out that most GRBs can be described by existing theories of so-called "relativistic fireballs". These arise when an extremely violent explosion produces a blast wave of material moving very close to the speed of light, initially creating high-energy gamma radiation, and then a lower energy afterglow as it crashes into surrounding gas. "Although we now know where the objects that give off gamma-ray bursts are," said Nial Tanvir, "many questions remain unanswered - not least, what gives rise to the explosions that produce them. The Descartes Prize recognises the pioneering achievements of the last few years but will also help us tackle the outstanding puzzle as to what causes gamma-ray burst in the first place." CONTACTS Professor Sir Martin Rees, Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge e-mail: mjr@ast.cam.ac.uk phone: (+44) (0)1223 337520 Dr Nial Tanvir, University of Hertfordshire e-mail: nrt@star.herts.ac.uk phone (+44) (0)1707 286299 mobile phone: (+44) (0)7980 136499 NOTES 1. More about the Decartes Prize can be found at www.cordis.lu/descartes 2. Other members of the gamma-ray burst collaboration with affiliations as they appear on the Descartes Prize citation (some have since changed): Edward van den Heuvel - University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Jan van Paradijs - University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands (deceased) Titus Galama - University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Paul Groot - University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Chryssa Kouveliotou - Marshall Space Flight Center, USA John Heise - Space Research Organisation Netherlands (SRON) Jean in't Zand - Space Research Organisation Netherlands (SRON) Luigi Piro - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) Rome, Italy Enrico Costa - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) Rome, Italy Marco Feroci - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) Rome, Italy Filippo Frontera - University of Ferrara, Italy Elena Pian - Trieste Astronomical Observatory, Italy Luciano Nicastro - Istituto di fisica cosmica e applicazioni dell'informatica (IFCAI), Palermo, Italy Jens Hjorth - University of Copenhagen, Denmark Holger Pederson - University of Copenhagen, Denmark Alberto Castro-Tirado - Laboratorio de Astrofisica Espacial y Fisica Fundamental (LAEFF), Granada, Spain Jochen Greiner - Astrofisikalisches Institut Potsdam, Germany Nial Tanvir - University of Cambridge, UK (now at University of Hertfordshire) Martin Rees - University of Cambridge, UK Ralph Wijers - University of Cambridge, UK (now at University of Amsterdam)