Lecture "Gamma-ray bursts, a journey to the heart of the Universe's most violent phenomena".

Club Vega offers a lecture entitled "Les sursauts gamma, voyage au cœur des phénomènes les plus violents de l'Univers" by Stéphane BASA, astrophysicist at the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille.

Gamma-ray bursts belong to that category of celestial phenomena that force the human mind to reconsider its scales of measurement. Their existence confronts us with such violence that our familiar references - Sun, stars, galaxies - suddenly seem quite modest.

Their origins have long remained mysterious, and we are only just beginning to unravel their secrets. The mechanisms at play involve black holes, speeds close to the speed of light and energies that have not been encountered since the formation of the Universe.

This talk will trace the history of their discovery and present our current understanding in the light of the most recent observations, including those from gravitational waves. Finally, it will show how the scientific community is organizing around the Franco-Chinese SVOM space mission, specifically designed to detect, observe and understand them - and, through them, to explore the remotest regions of the cosmos.