European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - February 8, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse                                An artist s drawing depicts the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory As it floats through space. The Observatory was carried aloft and released by the space shuttle Atlantis in 1991. Energy from the far reaches of the Galaxy by Kathy Sawyer the Washington Post a n orbiting Observatory has detected what some astronomers believe is the imprint of the expanding universe reflected in bursts of High Energy rays being fired toward Earth from All directions by violent mysterious objects. A team of astronomers analysing data from Nasa s Compton Gamma Ray Observatory has found that the radiation of these monstrous explosions known As Gamma Ray bursts has apparently been Quot stretched Quot on its Way to Earth. The stretching known As time dilation was predicted in Albert Einstein s general theory of relativity. This stretching would be expected to occur in the wavelengths of Gamma Ray bursts originating in the farthest reaches of the universe billions of Light years Distant and elongated by the time they Are detected Here. Lasting Only seconds or minutes a single burst might produce More Energy than the Sun releases in a thousand years. If the events Are As Distant As the new evidence indicates the team said Quot the Power of these explosions May be greater than anything Ever seen before Ras much As one quintillion suns Quot in order to be detected. Bohdan Paczynski of Princeton University in new Jersey one of those who had predicted the effect called the findings Quot one of the most spectacular astrophysical discoveries of the  the new evidence was presented last month at the american astronomical society meeting in Washington by a team led by Jay Norris of Goddard space flight Center. Scientists have been puzzling Over the mysterious bursts since they were discovered in the late 1960s by . Defense satellites searching for nuclear test violations. Of All forms of electromagnetic radiation Gamma rays Are the most energetic and difficult to capture. Invisible to the human Eye they travel in wavelengths no longer than the distance across the nucleus of an atom but Earth s atmosphere prevents most of them from reaching the ground. On Earth they Are produced in Man made thermonuclear explosions. A Gamma Ray unit might have 10 million times the Energy of a comparable unit of the radiation in the Kitchen microwave. The 17-ton Compton is the first spacecraft equipped with sophisticated instruments designed to study celestial Gamma rays across a Range of wavelengths. Since its launch in 1991, the Compton has catalogued some 750 bursts. The Compton s Early results Shook the then current theory that the bursts originated in explosions or Quot Star quakes Quot within or near the Milky Way Earth s Home Galaxy. Instead it showed the bursts did not correspond to the geography of the Milky Way but came from All directions. However despite the mounting evidence some researchers continue to argue that the Gamma Ray bursts Are confined within the Milky Way and do not come from incredibly powerful objects in the nether regions of the universe