The deviation in the brightness distribution simply states that the edge of the source distribution is being observed, it does not reveal the exact distance to the edge of this distribution. We anticipate the locations of the bursts, especially the weakest ones, to be strung out across the band of the Milky Way like pearls on a necklace. This remaining observation would confirm our prediction of the previous chapter for gamma-ray bursts associated with neutron stars in the disk of the Galaxy. Instead of finding the gamma-ray bursts with locations aligned with the plane of the Milky Way, the bursts' positions are completely random in the sky. There is no preferred direction to the burst locations and there is no preferred plane such as the plane of the Galaxy.
All directions are equally likely to be the direction for a given burst.
The angular distribution is consistent with no two bursts repeating and no tendency for bursts to cluster together. The angular distribution of bursts is almost perfectly isotropic. This result, especially in light of the observed brightness distribution, was totally unexpected. Given the observed brightness distribution, the angular distribution must be anisotropic if bursts are located in the Galactic plane. In just a few short months, fifteen years of research involving the associations between gamma-ray bursts and Galactic neutron stars was made largely obsolete.