How to Use gamma-ray burst in a Sentence

gamma-ray burst

noun
  • That's because gamma-ray bursts don't happen all of the time.
    — Chelsea Gohd, Space.com, 7 July 2026
  • The gamma-ray burst — witnessed as a long, bright pulse of light — was the birth cry of a black hole.
    — Katie Hunt, CNN, 22 Oct. 2022
  • But although lethal, nearby gamma-ray bursts are also very rare.
    — Seth Shostak, Quartz, 26 Sep. 2019
  • In each instance, the gamma-ray burst does not come from the explosion itself.
    — Jonathan O'Callaghan, Wired, 18 July 2021
  • On the other hand, short gamma-ray bursts have pulses shorter than two seconds.
    — Amy Lien, Discover Magazine, 19 Apr. 2024
  • Unfortunately, the chances of seeing a gamma-ray burst go off so close by aren’t very high.
    — Erika K. Carlson, Discover Magazine, 14 Jan. 2020
  • Another option is that the long gamma-ray bursts don’t come from feasting newborn black holes at all.
    — Quanta Magazine, 13 Dec. 2023
  • The link between this observation and the gamma-ray burst event wasn’t evident at first.
    — Dhananjay Khadilkar, Ars Technica, 17 Nov. 2023
  • However, the researchers knew the February flare was too bright to have been a gamma-ray burst.
    — Jacquelyne Germain, Smithsonian Magazine, 2 Dec. 2022
  • The gamma-ray burst was slightly offset from the center of the black hole, so its light took two paths, one slightly longer than the other.
    — Quanta Magazine, 29 Mar. 2021
  • At the greatest distances of all, gamma-ray bursts mark the universe’s most energetic events.
    — Ethan Siegel, Big Think, 22 Sep. 2025
  • The team concluded that an intermediate-mass black hole sat between us and the gamma-ray burst.
    — Quanta Magazine, 29 Mar. 2021
  • Astronomers found a fireball from a gamma-ray burst in 2013, but there was no proof that neutron stars were involved.
    — Dennis Overbye, New York Times, 16 Oct. 2017
  • On average, there is thought to be one observable gamma-ray burst in the visible universe every day.
    — Jonathan O'Callaghan, Wired, 18 July 2021
  • Again, the rate at which this would occur is sufficiently low that very few planets would ever be sterilized by a gamma-ray burst.
    — Discover Magazine, 17 July 2017
  • Both gamma-ray bursts and supernovae have affected life here over the course of its 4-billion-year evolution.
    — Bruce Dorminey, Forbes, 8 Jan. 2025
  • In just a few seconds, a gamma-ray burst blasts out the same amount of energy that the Sun will radiate throughout its entire life.
    — Eleonora Troja, The Conversation, 21 Dec. 2022
  • This sudden release of radiation, also called a shock breakout, could produce a gamma-ray burst.
    — Rupendra Brahambhatt, Interesting Engineering, 14 Mar. 2026
  • The new results suggest that neutron-star mergers are important sources of short-duration gamma-ray bursts, study team members said.
    — Mike Wall, Space.com, 5 Sep. 2018
  • Space telescopes observed a short gamma-ray burst, a powerful beam of radiation, coming from about the same part of the sky about two seconds later.
    — Marina Koren, The Atlantic, 17 Oct. 2017
  • Astronomers generally think that one type of gamma-ray burst, called long-duration gamma-ray bursts, come from very massive, fast-spinning stars.
    — Erika K. Carlson, Discover Magazine, 14 Jan. 2020
  • Researchers took advantage of rare, powerful gamma-ray bursts in distant galaxies.
    — James Cirrone, FOXNews.com, 4 July 2026
  • The Hubble Space Telescope captured the infrared afterglow of the very bright gamma-ray burst.
    — Briley Lewis, Popular Science, 4 Apr. 2023
  • Astronomers around the world then got to work, training other telescopes on the part of the sky the gamma-ray burst had come from and poring through data that had already been collected.
    — The Economist, 16 Oct. 2017
  • As a result, the light from the initial supernova that caused the gamma-ray burst was expected to become brightest a few months after the burst was sighted.
    — Clara Moskowitz, Scientific American, 9 Dec. 2025
  • Over the years, numerous astronomers have suggested the culprit might have been a gamma-ray burst (GRB).
    — Eric Betz, Discover Magazine, 9 May 2021
  • The particles can pass through any kind of matter and contain information about some of the most energetic events in the universe, such as gamma-ray bursts.
    — Ashley Strickland, CNN, 15 Feb. 2025
  • Meanwhile, astronomers spied a bright gamma-ray burst that resulted from a rare cosmic explosion, releasing a shower of gold and platinum in space.
    — Ashley Strickland, CNN, 10 Dec. 2022
  • The event, a gamma-ray burst, was triggered by the merger of two neutron stars, forming a single mass of neutrons that was large enough to collapse into a black hole shortly afterwards.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 5 Sep. 2018
  • While observing it, astronomers noticed a brief, one-time-only spike in brightness, possibly indicating a gamma-ray burst.
    — Ethan Siegel, Big Think, 22 Sep. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'gamma-ray burst.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: