Yesterday, I participated in a press teleconference announcing new observations and research on the brightest bang ever seen in the sky. Astronomers on Earth saw it March 19, 2008, but it actually happened 7.5 billion years ago when a massive star collapsed and formed a black hole, producing an event astronomers call a gamma-ray burst. For about 40 seconds, its optical flash was visible to the naked eye. You’ll see lots of coverage of this in the...