Reverse Shocks and The Optical Flash
There can be "reverse shocks", which propagate back into the shocked matter once it begins to encounter the interstellar medium. The twice-shocked material can produce a bright optical/UV flash, which has been seen in a few GRBs, though it appears not to be a common phenomenon.
Read more about this topic: Gamma-ray Burst Emission Mechanisms
Famous quotes containing the words reverse, shocks, optical and/or flash:
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—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)
“Order is Heaven’s first law; and this confessed,
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More rich, more wise; but who infers from hence
That such are happier, shocks all common sense.
Condition, circumstance, is not the thing;
Bliss is the same in subject or in king.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“It is said that a carpenter building a summer hotel here ... declared that one very clear day he picked out a ship coming into Portland Harbor and could distinctly see that its cargo was West Indian rum. A county historian avers that it was probably an optical delusion, the result of looking so often through a glass in common use in those days.”
—For the State of New Hampshire, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“I think that in the swift white mind’s brain
Neurons flash images of a world
Undead and deathless, burgeoning again.
I think that Spring will come this way, unfurled.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)