Micro neutron star versus nano comet versus mega red giant

If you're a fan of over-the-top ridiculously huge violent explosions, then you won't do any better than gamma-ray bursts. With apologies to Douglas Adams and Eccentrica Gallumbits, GRBs are the Universe's largest bangs since The Big One. When they were first discovered, during the Cold War, it was unclear what caused them. There were more theories than there were observations of them! Now we've observed hundreds of these things, and we've learned quite a bit about them, like a) every one of them is different, 2) they have lots of different sources, and γ) even after five decades they can still surprise us. Last year on Christmas, the light from a gamma-ray burst reached Earth and was detected by NASA's orbiting Swift satellite. Designated GRB 101225A, it was weird right off the bat: it lasted a staggering half hour, when most GRBs are over within seconds, or a few minutes ...