Published on Monday, 19 May 2008 19:00 | | 
What is this life if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare...up at the night sky from time to time?
Gamma-ray bursts are thought to be the most luminous single transient events in the universe, writes Robert Naeye, and the one on 19 March seems to have broken all records for the brightest gamma-ray burst so far. It occurred about 8 billion light years away, but was bright enough (briefly) to be visible without a telescope, should someone have been looking up in that direction at that moment.