Short-lived flashes of gamma radiation in a quasi-spherical Szekeres metric

Abstract

In previous papers it was shown that gamma rays with characteristics similar to those of the gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) observed by astronomers may arise from suitably shaped nonuniformities in the Big Bang in a quasi-spherical Szekeres (QSS) model. The gamma radiation arises by blueshifting the light emitted by hydrogen atoms at the end of the last scattering epoch along preferred directions that exist in QSS models. However, the durations of the gamma flashes and of their afterglows implied by the model were much longer than those of the observed GRBs. In this paper it is shown that for the gamma-ray flash a duration of correct order results if the blueshifted radiation, on its way to the present observer, passes through another QSS region where it is deflected. The angle of deflection changes with time because of the cosmological drift mechanism, so the high-frequency ray will miss the observer after a while. It is shown by explicit numerical calculation that a gamma-ray flash will no longer be visible to the present observer after 10 minutes.