Gamma-Ray Bursts: Learning about the Birth of Black Holes and Opening new Frontiers for Cosmology

Swift, a satellite devoted to the study of cosmic gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), is now fully operational and detects about 100 GRBs per year, as the first year of operation demonstrated. Since its launch (20 November 2004), Swift has monitored with the narrow-field X-Ray Telescope (XRT) 75 afterglows (out of 97 GRBs), starting just a few minutes after the GRB onset. Together with the events detected by HETE-II and INTEGRAL, Swift gives us a unique position to unveil the details of these enigmatic events, which likely identify the birth of black holes. GRBs are also useful cosmological tools, and can be used as powerful, distant beacons to trace the history and evolution of the early Universe. All of this can be accomplished by the use of Swift, coupled to large ground-based telescopes. In this article we describe some of the fresh, exciting results obtained in the field.