Donald Q. Lamb
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637
I draw attention to the many similarities between soft gamma-ray repeaters, which are known to be high velocity neutron stars, and gamma-ray bursts. I point out that the source of the famous 1979 March 5 event, which is a high velocity neutron star 50 kpc away from us, demonstrates that high velocity neutron stars are capable of producing bursts which have the energy, the duration, and the spectrum of gamma-ray bursts. Finally, I comment that high velocity neutron stars in a distant Galactic corona can account for cyclotron lines and repeating, and naturally explain the absence of bright optical counterparts in gamma-ray burst error boxes, whereas all of these present major difficulties for cosmological models.
I conclude that when we consider all of the evidence, it adds up to a strong case for the Galactic hypothesis.