COSMIC GAMMA-RAY BURSTS - RECENT DEVELOPMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS FROM SROSS SATELLITES

Amongst a dozen energetic phenomena discovered during the past quarter century, the enigma of classical gamma ray bursts (GRBs) is as great as ever, with no consensus on what causes these bursts. The once domin ant galactic neutron star model of GRBs has lost its popularity to the extragalactic and cosmological models in view of COMPTON's observatio ns. The observational efforts in tracking down these mysterious source s are at the moment truly international, with emphasis on the best loc alizations followed by deep searches for counterparts at other wavelen gths.