NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

MEDIA ADVISORY : M05-164 NASA Solves Cosmic Mystery NASA is hosting a news conference at 1 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, Oct. 5, to announce scientists have solved a 35-year-old mystery. The press conference is in NASA's auditorium, 300 E Street S.W., Washington.

Scientists solved the mystery of the origin of powerful, split-second flashes of light called short gamma ray bursts. The flashes, brighter than a billion suns and lasting only a few milliseconds, had previously been too fast to catch.

Panelists:
Kim Weaver, program scientist, NASA Headquarters
Neil Gehrels, Swift principal investigator, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Derek Fox, asst. professor, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Penn State University, State College, Pa.
Albert Lazzarini, Data & Computing group leader, Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Edward Kolb, director, Particle Astrophysics Center, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia, Ill.
George Ricker, HETE principal investigator, MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Cambridge, Mass.

NASA TV is carrying the conference live with Q&A capability from participating NASA centers. To ask questions by phone, reporters may call: 888/282-1670 or 210/234-0016; provide the passcode "NSU."

For continental North America, NASA TV is carried on an MPEG-2 digital signal accessed via satellite AMC-6, at 72 degrees west longitude, transponder 17C, 4040 MHz, vertical polarization. It's available in Alaska and Hawaii on an MPEG-2 digital signal accessed via satellite AMC-7, transponder 18C, 137 degrees west longitude, 4060 MHz, vertical polarization. A Digital Video Broadcast compliant Integrated Receiver Decoder is required for reception. For information about NASA TV, including complete digital downlink information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

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