Eric Burns
Associate Professor Louisiana State University
- Baton Rouge LA
Dr. Burns uses multidisciplinary research to understand how the universe works.
Media
Biography
Areas of Expertise
Research Focus
High-Energy Transients & Gamma-Ray Bursts
Dr. Burns’s research focuses on high-energy transient astrophysical events—gamma-ray bursts, neutron-star mergers, and other multi-messenger phenomena that forge heavy elements like gold. He analyzes space-borne gamma-ray observations and multi-messenger datasets to uncover explosion mechanisms and trace the cosmic origins of the universe’s heaviest matter.
Accomplishments
Habitable Worlds Observatory Community Science & Instrument Team
2025-Present
Lead of the InterPlanetary Network
2022-Present
NASA Early Career Public Achievement Medal
2020
Education
University of Alabama in Huntsville
Ph.D.
2017
Media Appearances
We figured out where gold comes from. The answer is explosive.
The Washington Post online
2025-05-04
“If you disrupt the neutron star, you have now freed the densest matter in the universe that’s mostly comprised of neutrons,” said Eric Burns, a co-author on the study and astrophysicist at Louisiana State University
The Universe’s Gold May Come From a Totally Unexpected Kind of Star
Gizmodo online
2025-05-01
“It’s answering one of the questions of the century and solving a mystery using archival data that had been nearly forgotten,” said Eric Burns, an astrophysicist at LSU and co-author of the paper, in a NASA release.
Explosion 1 million times brighter than the Milky Way creates rare elements
CNN online
2023-10-27
“This burst is way into the long category. It’s not near the border. But it seems to be coming from a merging neutron star,” said study coauthor Eric Burns, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University, in a statement.
The brightest blast ever seen in space continues to surprise scientists
National Geographic online
2023-08-16
“It's the brightest one ever seen, almost by a factor of 70,” says Burns. This extreme brightness is due to the fact that the GRB was relatively nearby, at some two billion light-years distant, and it also just happened to be an intrinsically bright explosion.
Editorial: LSU scientists contribute to mankind's understanding of the universe
NOLA online
2023-04-20
''GRB 221009A was likely the brightest burst at X-ray and gamma-ray energies to occur since human civilization began,’' Burns said. Earning the title of BOAT, or “brightest of all time,” the event prompted Burns and colleagues to mobilize the James Webb Space Telescope and other telescopes' instruments to better observe the gamma-ray burst.
Satellites Threaten Astronomy, but a Few Scientists See an Opportunity
The New York Times online
2023-04-17
“It’s a hot topic,” said Eric Burns, an astronomer at Louisiana State University. “We’re dealing with numbers of satellites so great that they are limiting the sensitivity of ground-based telescopes.”
‘Quite Unexpected’: LSU Astrophysicist Helps Trace the Origin of the First Gold in the Universe
Louisiana State University online
2025-04-29
Nearly everyone has looked up at the night sky and wondered about the mysteries of the universe. LSU astrophysicist Eric Burns says he and his fellow experts are doing that very thing from a scientific perspective, and they recently struck gold.
Brightest gamma-ray burst ever seen a 1-in-10,000-years event that's 'absolutely monstrous,' scientists say
Space online
2023-03-28
"It is just an absolutely monstrous burst. It is extremely extraordinary; we've never seen anything remotely close to it," Eric Burns, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University, said Tuesday (March 28) during a press conference at the 20th meeting of the American Astronomical Society's High Energy Astrophysics Division in Hawaii.
Astrophysicists break down the impact of newly released NASA images
Phys.org online
2022-07-15
"These images are the first scientific results from Webb, a successor to Hubble, representing the product of two decades of work from scientists at NASA, ESA, and CSA. Each of the five in the initial release come from only the first week of observations. Not only are they breathtaking, they are harbingers for the results Webb will enable over the next decade," says LSU Astrophysicist Eric Burns.
Astronomers unmask cosmic eruptions in nearby galaxies
Phys.org
2021-01-22
"Discovering the existence of a population of extragalactic magnetar flares will provide future research opportunities for LIGO and nuclear physicists to delve into core questions of the universe," said LSU Department of Physics & Astronomy Assistant Professor Eric Burns, who is part of this international discovery.
Articles
Direct Evidence for r-process Nucleosynthesis in Delayed MeV Emission from the SGR 1806–20 Magnetar Giant Flare
The Astrophysical Journal Letters2025
The origin of heavy elements synthesized through the rapid neutron capture process (r-process) has been an enduring mystery for over half a century. J. Cehula et al. recently showed that magnetar giant flares, among the brightest transients ever observed, can shock heat and eject neutron star crustal material at high velocity, achieving the requisite conditions for an r-process. A. Patel et al. confirmed an r-process in these ejecta using detailed nucleosynthesis calculations. Radioactive decay of the freshly synthesized nuclei releases a forest of gamma-ray lines, Doppler broadened by the high ejecta velocities v ≳ 0.1c into a quasi-continuous spectrum peaking around 1 MeV. Here, we show that the predicted emission properties (light curve, fluence, and spectrum) match a previously unexplained hard gamma-ray signal seen in the aftermath of the famous 2004 December giant flare from the magnetar SGR 1806–20.
Prompt Gamma-Ray Burst Recognition through Waterfalls and Deep Learning
The Astrophysical Journal2025
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are one of the most energetic phenomena in the cosmos, whose study can probe physics extremes beyond the reach of laboratories on Earth. Our quest to unravel the origin of these events and understand their underlying physics is far from complete. Central to this pursuit is the rapid classification of GRBs to guide follow-up observations and analysis across the electromagnetic spectrum and beyond. Here, we introduce a compelling approach that can set a milestone toward a new and robust GRB prompt classification method. Leveraging self-supervised deep learning, we pioneer a previously unexplored data product to approach this task: GRB waterfalls.
Heavy-element production in a compact object merger observed by JWST
Nature2023
The mergers of binary compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes are of central interest to several areas of astrophysics, including as the progenitors of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs)1, sources of high-frequency gravitational waves (GWs)2 and likely production sites for heavy-element nucleosynthesis by means of rapid neutron capture (the r-process)3. Here we present observations of the exceptionally bright GRB 230307A. We show that GRB 230307A belongs to the class of long-duration GRBs associated with compact object mergers4,5,6 and contains a kilonova similar to AT2017gfo, associated with the GW merger GW170817 (refs. 7,8,9,10,11,12). We obtained James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) mid-infrared imaging and spectroscopy 29 and 61 days after the burst. The spectroscopy shows an emission line at 2.15 microns, which we interpret as tellurium (atomic mass A = 130) and a very red source, emitting most of its light in the mid-infrared owing to the production of lanthanides. These observations demonstrate that nucleosynthesis in GRBs can create r-process elements across a broad atomic mass range and play a central role in heavy-element nucleosynthesis across the Universe.
GRB 221009A: The BOAT
The Astrophysical Journal Letters2023
GRB 221009A has been referred to as the brightest of all time (BOAT). We investigate the veracity of this statement by comparing it with a half century of prompt gamma-ray burst observations. This burst is the brightest ever detected by the measures of peak flux and fluence. Unexpectedly, GRB 221009A has the highest isotropic-equivalent total energy ever identified, while the peak luminosity is at the ∼99th percentile of the known distribution. We explore how such a burst can be powered and discuss potential implications for ultralong and high-redshift gamma-ray bursts. By geometric extrapolation of the total fluence and peak flux distributions, GRB 221009A appears to be a once-in-10,000-year event. Thus, it is almost certainly not the BOAT over all of cosmic history; it may be the brightest gamma-ray burst since human civilization began.
Identification of a Local Sample of Gamma-Ray Bursts Consistent with a Magnetar Giant Flare Origin
The Astrophysical Journal Letters2021
Cosmological gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are known to arise from distinct progenitor channels: short GRBs mostly from neutron star mergers and long GRBs from a rare type of core-collapse supernova (CCSN) called collapsars. Highly magnetized neutron stars called magnetars also generate energetic, short-duration gamma-ray transients called magnetar giant flares (MGFs). Three have been observed from the Milky Way and its satellite galaxies, and they have long been suspected to constitute a third class of extragalactic GRBs. We report the unambiguous identification of a distinct population of four local (99.9% confidence. These
Neutron star mergers and how to study them
Living Reviews in Relativity2020
Neutron star mergers are the canonical multimessenger events: they have been observed through photons for half a century, gravitational waves since 2017, and are likely to be sources of neutrinos and cosmic rays. Studies of these events enable unique insights into astrophysics, particles in the ultrarelativistic regime, the heavy element enrichment history through cosmic time, cosmology, dense matter, and fundamental physics. Uncovering this science requires vast observational resources, unparalleled coordination, and advancements in theory and simulation, which are constrained by our current understanding of nuclear, atomic, and astroparticle physics. This review begins with a summary of our current knowledge of these events, the expected observational signatures, and estimated detection rates for the next decade. I then present the key observations necessary to advance our understanding of these sources, followed by the broad science this enables. I close with a discussion on the necessary future capabilities to fully utilize these enigmatic sources to understand our universe.
Gravitational Waves and Gamma-Rays from a Binary Neutron Star Merger: GW170817 and GRB 170817A
The Astrophysical Journal Letters2017
On 2017 August 17, the gravitational-wave event GW170817 was observed by the Advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors, and the gamma-ray burst (GRB) GRB 170817A was observed independently by the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor, and the Anti-Coincidence Shield for the Spectrometer for the International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory. The probability of the near-simultaneous temporal and spatial observation of GRB 170817A and GW170817 occurring by chance is
. We therefore confirm binary neutron star mergers as a progenitor of short GRBs. The association of GW170817 and GRB 170817A provides new insight into fundamental physics and the origin of short GRBs.
Research Grants
Collaborative Research: New Windows on the Dynamic Universe with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, the InterPlanetary Network, and the International Gravitational Wave Network
NSF Award
2024-2028
Modernizing the InterPlanetary Network
NASA
2025-2027
