Program: GS-2004A-Q-8

All our recent progress in understanding GRBs applies to the ``long-duration'' (t>2s) class, for which long-lived afterglows have been found. The distinct, separate class of short-duration GRBs remains enigmatic because their afterglows, if they exist at all, are clearly much fainter. The forthcoming Swift satellite should provide a much higher rate of rapid, precise localisations of short bursts than hitherto. We propose to use Gemini Quick Response observations to conduct deep imaging searches for short-burst afterglows, with followup spectroscopy and photometry of any that are found. Finding even a single event could open up a new field of astrophysics.