Gamma ray burst. Computer artwork of a gamma ray burst. These are extremely high-energy events which flare up at random places throughout the universe. The burst, a flash of radiation shown with two jets here, may be as bright as the rest of the universe combined for a few seconds. They are thought to be extremely distant, up to 12 billion light years away. It is thought that they may be the result of a neutron star being torn apart by a black hole. The conditions within the burst itself, a volume only 100 miles across , are thought to be similar to those that were present about one millisecond (one thousandth of a second) after the Big Bang.