Number 49 (Story #2), September 26, 1991 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein GAMMA RAY BURSTS ARE UNIFORMLY DISTRIBUTED across the sky. Intensely energetic and lasting only seconds, the bursts had previously been thought to originate at neutron stars, which are predominately to be found, along with other stars, in the disk of our galaxy. Gerald Fishman, a NASA scientist analyzing data from the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (newly renamed for Arthur Compton), said that gamma bursts must now be viewed as some "new type of phenomenon previously unknown and undetectable." (The New York Times, 24 Sept. 1991.)