What does “pointed in the wrong direction” mean? Isn’t it a sphere? Genuine question; I am ignorant of such things.

Stars, like planets, rotate around an axis. GRBs that are emitted by collapsing stars are believed to be directionally aligned with the axis of rotation.

> What does “pointed in the wrong direction” mean?

Gamma-ray bursts [1] are a class of observations, not single event. Some of them may originate from relativistic jets [2] emitted by massive, spinning, charged objects colliding (e.g. black holes). Those jets' intensity is not uniform; if it's pointed at the Earth, that's worse than if it's pointed perpendicularly to it.

There are other mechanisms proposed that columnate the emission [3][4]. These involve a star's rotation creating a radiating column along the star's axis. (I'm not sure if the atoms in that column radiate with a bias.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_burst

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrophysical_jet

[3] https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9808355

[4] https://www.plasma-universe.com/gamma-ray-bursts/

Stars have a magnetic field and rotate along their axis, similar to planets. The burst is emitted along the axis of rotation (the geographic north and south pole).

Many stellar objects rotate and/or have a magnetic field, and thus an "up", "down", and "side" in spite of being a sphere. Pulsars (extinguished stars that emit radio waves from their poles) are another famous example.

> I mean, not much you can do about it, can you?

Work to shed our biology faster.

We'll get to that sometime in the next hundred years or so.

Mate I've got some bad news for you

>I mean, not much you can do about it, can you?

AKA: How I stopped worrying and learned to love the GRB