Science is all about blips. You see an unexplained blip in the data, you investigate the blip and, if you are really lucky, it turns out that it's both real and interesting. Sometimes, however, it proves to be impossible to explain the oddity, in which case, you put the data out for other scientists to look at. One such blip is found in short gamma ray bursts, intense pulses of high energy photons seen in astronomy. Sometimes, just before the main event, there is a short intense burst of gamma rays, called... wait for it... a short gamma ray burst precursor.

Scientists think they know how gamma ray bursts are generated: neutron stars and their close relatives colliding with each other, or being eaten by black holes. Why would some of them give off a short pulse of radiation just before the main event? Theoretical work now suggests that this may be because the neutron stars shed their skins just before they die.

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