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Hacking Satellites To Spot Gamma Ray Bursts
mustermark writes: "By reprogramming on the fly some of the instruments on satellites cruising the solar system, astronomers have pieced together an interplanetary "fishing net" to catch gamma-ray bursts, the most energetic explosions known in the cosmos. Lasting only seconds, they briefly outshine the entire universe but disappear before astronomers can get a fix on them. This latest hack, though, lets them triangulate a burst's position in a matter of seconds, catching them in the act."
I still think something decidedly strange is going on...
They have been doing it for years, but many of the satalites were damaged and destroyed. It appears that they are finally getting more attention and in return more funding. Their sensors seem to piggy-back on other satalites. (Many of those satalites they want to use, arn't being launched) In 1978 they launched the first one that could just detect them. Then in the 80's they launched a second for more accuaracy. Then in the late 1990's a third went up and they could triangulate to see them. They have only been able to see "1" so far, that lasted 5 seconds. As they put newer ones up, it will give them a little bit extra time to get radio satalites into possition to see them, before the signals pass by earth. Pretty cool stuff. Second powerful explosion (next to big bang with can't exist, otherwise we never would have existed, but thats another topic).
Check out the link, pretty cool reading for history,science,math, and "cool tech stuff".
--Brandon
I hope that this is a joke in bad taste. If not I will be very dissapointed with the Slashdot editors.
/. community. Yes he posts offtopic posts, but he posesses a unique sense of humour. On many occasions his various stories and parodies have made me laugh. He is not rude like many other posters, and he is not a spammer. He is just different from most of us. I thought that this is exactly what Slashdot encouraged: individuality.
I consider osm to be one of the most significant members of the
The thought of being sued for posting off-topic posts frightens me. Those of you who know me are aware that sometimes perform various experiments: I may post something that someone else has already posted or even something from an article to see whether the moderators will notice it. Other times my posts express views that go against the current, in order to stimulate thought from the Slashdot readers. If osm has been sued for posting stories that he has written himself, where will that get me? Lynched?
As for the takeover of the thread that you mention, is this for certain? Have the editors actually checked the IP addresses of all the posters, and were able to determin that it was osm who made all the posts? It seems very unlikely to me.
Je vous embrasse,
Philippe.
Slander is slander. get over it. It is illegal to slander and defame somebody. Not only that, you trolls have ruined slashdot, and trolls are getting worse. the signal to noise ratio have driven many away. I don't know what the lawsuit is about, but I stand behind ./ Take responsibility for your actions and what you say, do and post to message boards. and, again
GROW-UP
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
Sorry, had to get that off my chest. you can go back to reading useful posts now.
========
<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
"GRBs doesn't contain any visible portion, unfortunately"
But I thought that was the whole point of this, to get a GRB located so we could steeer a visible light telescope over to it's part of the sky, and record the visible-light portion.
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
This is a little off-topic but the article in question reminds me of something I read about not too long ago: the possibility that the red-shift of stars may not be 100% attributable to motion.
Consider the following scenario: A light beam is emitted from a super-dense object, and is thus forced to climb out of a steep gravity well. There is a loss of energy that occurs in this process, which in matter would manifest itself as a loss of momentum. However, a loss of energy in light can only be manifested as jump to a lower frequency.
Next, consider the possibility that our universe is closed, and that the four dimensional shape corresponds to that of a sphere (i.e. travelling in a straigh line from point A would eventually return you to point A). This would mean that there is a specific minimum curviture to space at any point in the universe. Light travelling across the interstellar void would be forced to traverse this curve and thus would gradually lose energy (red-shift) in the process. This would explain, perhaps, the "quantization" effect noticed in the patterns of red-shift of a wide variety of stars.
"The unicode stuff in the latest version is working fabulously well. My russian mafia friends are ecstatic."
From APOD...
Considerably more than 13.
--
--
The Internet is the Suppository of All Knowledge. You get it in the end.
To answer a few people's questions (I'm an astronomer and I've done some research on Gamma Ray Bursts)
l es/709.asp
The system works because the satellites can time the arrival of bursts of gamma rays very accurately (minute fractions of a second, though
it depends on the satellite). Since the gamma rays travel at the speed of light, they arrive at each satellite at a different times, and you can use this information to find the position of the burst in the sky. The timing info is stored and sent back to Earth, so it doesn't matter if there is a lag in sending the info back to Earth.
Since you can't see gamma rays, and each detector doesn't have spatial information, you can't create a picture, but you can create graphs of the gamma rays versus time. Plus, some of the bursts are also seen in visible light, as seen in the picture on the page.
It is true that this system has been around for a while, as it says in the article. But the IPN has become much more important recently with the loss of the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, which reached the end of its mission and had to be crashed into the atmosphere. See: http://www.starstuff.org/default.asp?cover=/artic
CGRO used to produce nearly daily events, but
now that it is gone, this interplanetary network
will have to step up. Plus, with NEAR, there
is a third satellite, making determination of a unique position possible.
You can see the IPN notices sent out to astronomers here:
http://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/gcn/ipn/gcn_ipn.html
"How much for a beer?" The bartender replies, "For you, no charge."
Standard I/O Error. Incompetent/Operator.
Hundreds of thousands of intelligent civilizations expend 1.e+51 ergs of energy to beam their greetings, history and culture to the far reaches of the universe, only to have us sit back and think, "Hey, neat blips of radiation."
Hello? Rob? Jeff? Kurt? Can we please get that part of the code working again?
The way the doppler effect for light is calculated (red shift/blue shift) is dependant on the molecules/atoms that emitted the light. For instance, Hydrogen emits several frequencys of visible light when it is heated. If the pattern of frequencys is detected (by a spectroscope) higher than normal then the object is moving toward the observer. If they are lower then it is moving away. If the gamma rays are emitted by a particular atom then the pattern would be know and the doppler shift could be calculated.
I Don't Work Here
Uh, this IS hacking. English lesson #314: In the english language, words will occasionally convey more than one meaning, sometimes contradictory. For example, 'fast' can suggest very rapid movement as in 'that is a fast car' or it can suggest strong resistance as in 'that has a fast grip' or 'this has fast colors'. So in the case of 'hacking' we find: hack together vt. [common] To throw something together so it will work. Unlike `kluge together' or cruft together, this does not necessarily have negative connotations. Given that the satellites were not designed for this purpose and that the functionality is clearly an afterthought, it's proper to say it was 'hacked together'. It suggests nothing about the ingenuity or quality of the resulting product. Thanks for playing. Please come again.
Well I'm sorry for not getting the humor. These trolls really do piss me off. I don't take kindly to being lumped together with them.
Actually the gamma-ray burst most often only outshine the whole galaxy, but almost never the universe. Only one time has such a powerful burst been noticed that it momentarily outshone the whole universe. That threw quite a few theories back to the drawing board!
Article about it for example here.
I doubt, therefore I may be.
Well, it is bloody hard to find the redshift of GRBs, I can tell you that... It is only a handful where it has been successfully done. You pretty much have to do it on the optical counterpart after the burst, and you have to get a big telescope before it gets too faint.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Steinlager and Heineken are LAGER, not BEER. This is a common misconception amongst most of the English-speaking world. Lager and Beer are brewed differently using different types of yeast and have a totally different flavour/texture. Lager is usually preferred by immature palates.
I find /. Science/Space news strange at times, they post things like this which is far from news, but my note on the first high-resolution imaging to GRB host galaxies which is truly great stuff, was rejected.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Okay where did this start? Reply here:
bluemalamute
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Hey... is there any site that has pictures of the event?
kick some CAD on my.netscape.com
Using a hack on the nav systems?
For some reason I can't see this working very well. Whenever software is used to enhance hardware that has a different purpose, the outcome is never very good. I'm a little skeptical that this will triangulate to the degree of accuracy needed when identifying a single body in the sky.
Then again, if enough of these are out there, the triangulation may be quite precise. Perhaps 'triangulation' will be the wrong word!
usually, I post some smart-ass karma-whoring drivel.
This time I have a question. I'm not likely to understand the answer, but why don't you try me?
How do you calculate the redshift of a gamma-ray burst. I'm not talking about the visible light portion, I'm talking about the gamma-ray portion. If the waves are attenuated by the object's physical movement away from us, first-off, wouldn't the waves be shifted into a different part of the spectrum, gamma rays being at the extreme, high-frequency end? Also, how do we know what the "original" frequency was, prior to the redshifted signal arriving, so we can calculate the amount of redshift.
I'm hoping this is an answer a normal human can understand, because I'm neither an astrophysicist, nor do I play one on TV, and if I did, I sure as hell wouldn't look like Jodie Foster! (what a hottie! Better than Natalie Portman if you ask me.)
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I recently attended a lecture at Los Alamos National Laboratory on gamma ray bursts, and discovered that scientists have had this technology for some time. From the time a satellite detects a gamma ray burst and pinpoints its position and transmits a signal to an automatic ground-based telescope, to the time the ground-based telescope swings around and points at the gamma ray burster is six seconds. And this has been around for a while. Nothing new.
Now if this latest technology improves that time, then that would be interesting.
This is a private discussion board, and Rob has every right to dictate when his open posting policy has been pushed too far. There are limits to free speech. You can not yell "fire" in a crowded theatre, and you do not have the right to drown out serious discussion on a private messaging system.
The communications that take place on /. are of the utmost importance in how we develop our Open Source initiatives, and require an atmosphere of absolutely scholarly respect in order for us to be successful. Trolling detracts from this so much that we are left unable to continue our conversations.
I was a part of the group that was drowned out by the Natalie-thon" last month, and it completely wrecked the discussions my colleagues and I were having. We could not post so much as a single sentence w/out suffering the childish ridicule of these trolls.
ENOUGH I say! We have suffered for too long already. File your suit, Andover. The true community of slashdot is 100% behind you.
I assume that the recorded number of bursts will go up once the sats. start broadcsting data hourly instead of daily. Cool tech though.
Information wants to be free like speech wants to be free, not like we want beer to be free.
It looks like a single satellite can know when it hears a gamma ray burst, but not where it comes from. (hence I used to word "hear", and not "see").
Astronomers can't really expect to triangulate the distance of the burst, they just want to know its position on the celestial sphere (so they can look with Hubble in visible light, say). So there are 3 unknowns: the coordinates on the celestial sphere, plus the "universal" time of the burst. With 3 satellites, each giving a local timing of the burst, you get 3 data values. Solve the equations, and off you go with the gamma-ray burst pinned down!
They haven't discovered only one. There's thirteen recorded gamma ray bursts on record. They're exceedingly rare, though, so you'll never see an astrophysicist more excited than when a gamma ray burst is detected.
Someone seriously needs to hack together a quick game of this if they haven't already and unleash it onto the anonymous cowards. I can see it now: fastest finger to get first post, endless spam in a virtual inbox, hot grits down everyone's pants, all without ever actually coming to slashdot. It would be so much fun that I'd never actually play it, I'd just think about it all day.
this is a sig.
Go read the article, it's not "hacking". That is just what the author of the story put because he doesn't know better. It's accually a complex system that they have been /very/ slowly adding pieces to. The author called it hacking possibly because the sensors for detecting these blasts are piggy-backed on other satalites. It's quite a complex system how they detect, send information back to earth, and possition radio telescopes to detect the few second blasts. If the author is out there and reading this, why don't you tell us why you call this "hacking"? It's a fairly complex system that has been worked in since 1978!
I'm suprised things like this haven't been implemented more recently. it seems trivial to have multiple detectors on arbitrary geosync satelites and earth based installations. I'd think that you get three or so opposite geosync satelites and a few earth installations all actively looking for anomalies such as these (I'm thinking other bursts too that might be quick) and triangulation would be trivial - and even a relatively laggy connection such as simple email could be quick enough to alert the correct people.
...
now the question is, is this really big news? I'm not so sure anymore.
--onyx--
I would assume that the closest satelite to Earth does the largest amounts of info gathering. Since you know the points of the other two, and their distance from the closest one, it can do all the work, and relay the data back to Nasa. Of course,there is not much data to be transmitted. I doubt there is much security, or header info.. just a bunch of error checking.
/. is a commercial entity. goto slashdot.com
1- your post is completely off topic.
2- Slashdot is THEIR web site, and as such, can do what they want. and
3- Posters should take responsibility for their own actions/comments.
I agree with /. Slandering someone is illegal, as is posting copywritten information without the consent of the copyright holders. Have you ever thought of how Ms. Portman feels about the slander and what is posted about her here?
Grow-up will you? The world needs you to act your age, not your shoe size.
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
Uhm, yes Slashdot is their website so they can do what they want, including censorship.
But I mean a law suit for posting some jokes? I think it is going a bit too far.
Sure, kid. Hey, shouldn't you be playing with your Lego's or something?
Until then it's just my sneaking suspicion that something's not right in the troll world.
I am from Minnesota, if you must know.
Not only that, you trolls
./
/. ? If there was slander then Natalie Portman or whoever was the victim could file a law suit. What does /. have to do with it? It is just a message board where people post what they want.
Sorry, me a troll? I just saw something I disagree with and I replied. Please, be careful before making such accusations. May'be check my history to see if I have trolled before.
I don't know what the lawsuit is about, but I stand behind
Why do you stand behind
I have been recently thinking about beer. Beer is the nectar of Gods. We're not talking Guiness or Cerveza here, we're talking the real shit, Steinlager, Heineken, Pete's Ale.
The problem these days is that people can't appreciate good beer. Too many people just get wasted on cheap-ass Ice House, Coors, or even worse, Bud. And that is a shame.
In the old days, things were different. Beer, that was a commodity. Good, aged beer was valuable. People treasured those moments of enjoying a pint of cold, tasty lager with plenty of head. Nobody would touch an aluminium can, let alone beer in plastic.
Open up a can of MGD today, and you've set yourself up for some major disappointment. Firstly, aluminum leaves a nasty aftertaste in your beer. Secondly, MGD has absolutely no head. It looks like stale tea. Thirdly, it tastes like stale tea too.
Henceforth, I urge you people, don't drink cheap shitty beer!
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`"""""""""""""""""`
I have been recently thinking about beer. Beer is the nectar of Gods. We're not talking Guiness or Cerveza here, we're talking the real shit, Steinlager, Heineken, Pete's Ale.
The problem these days is that people can't appreciate good beer. Too many people just get wasted on cheap-ass Ice House, Coors, or even worse, Bud. And that is a shame.
In the old days, things were different. Beer, that was a commodity. Good, aged beer was valuable. People treasured those moments of enjoying a pint of cold, tasty lager with plenty of head. Nobody would touch an aluminium can, let alone beer in plastic.
Open up a can of MGD today, and you've set yourself up for some major disappointment. Firstly, aluminum leaves a nasty aftertaste in your beer. Secondly, MGD has absolutely no head. It looks like stale tea. Thirdly, it tastes like stale tea too.
Henceforth, I urge you people, don't drink cheap shitty beer!
_, . '__ .
'_(_0o),(__)o().
o(_,-o(_ )(),(__(_)oO)_
|^^/.........|......|......|......|......|.....
|^^|.........|......|......|......|......|.....
|^^|.........|......|......|......|......|.....
|^^|.........|......|......|......|......|.....
|^^\.........|......|......|......|......|.....
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'----|......|......|......|......|......|
|......|......|......|......|......|
\......\......\....../....../....../
`"""""""""""""""""`
I have been recently thinking about beer. Beer is the nectar of Gods. We're not talking Guiness or Cerveza here, we're talking the real shit, Steinlager, Heineken, Pete's Ale.
._(_0o),(__)o().
,o(__),_)o(_)O,(__)o
.O(__)o,__).(_ )o(_)Oo_)
.----|......|......|......|......|......|_)0
/^^^.--|......|......|......|......|......|,_) . |o(_) . |_/`) . |O_) . | . |
The problem these days is that people can't appreciate good beer. Too many people just get wasted on cheap-ass Ice House, Coors, or even worse, Bud. And that is a shame.
In the old days, things were different. Beer, that was a commodity. Good, aged beer was valuable. People treasured those moments of enjoying a pint of cold, tasty lager with plenty of head. Nobody would touch an aluminium can, let alone beer in plastic.
Open up a can of MGD today, and you've set yourself up for some major disappointment. Firstly, aluminum leaves a nasty aftertaste in your beer. Secondly, MGD has absolutely no head. It looks like stale tea. Thirdly, it tastes like stale tea too.
Henceforth, I urge you people, don't drink cheap shitty beer!
_, . '__ .
o(_,-o(_ )(),(__(_)oO)_
|^^/.........|......|......|......|......|.....
|^^|.........|......|......|......|......|.....
|^^|.........|......|......|......|......|.....
|^^|.........|......|......|......|......|.....
|^^\.........|......|......|......|......|.....
\^^'---|.....|......|......|......|......|
'----|......|......|......|......|......|
|......|......|......|......|......|
\......\......\....../....../....../
`"""""""""""""""""`
on the Gamma Ray Observatory was the best thing we had for burst detection currently in orbit. It wasn't very good at locating individual bursts, but it was great at observing bursts nearly across the sky. BATSE's original task was to determine the statistical distribution of bursts across the sky, to determine whether or not bursts were galactic, inter solar system, or cosmological in origin. BATSE also could get great spectral resolution of a burst.
When it was determined beyond a statistical doubt that bursts were cosmological, work turned to locating an individual source. BATSE was still invaluable, for the aforementioned all-sky capability made BATSE a great early warning device to allow viewers on the ground opportunities to detect burst sources, if possible.
Of course, GRO and BATSE are gone, spread out over the Pacific. It's extremely disappointing to me that such a robust tool like BATSE was sunk for such a poor excuse, and with no other satellite with it's abilities available to back it up. It's a goddamn shame.
It's pretty trivial, you get three or so opposite geosync satelites and a few earth installations all actively looking for anomalies such as these. If the waves are attenuated by the object's physical movement away from us, first-off, the waves would be shifted into a different part of the spectrum, gamma rays being at the extreme, high-frequency end. The time a satellite detects a gamma ray burst and pinpoints its position and transmits a signal to an automatic ground-based telescope, to the time the ground-based telescope swings around and points at the gamma ray burster is six seconds. I just thought i'd share a little background knowledge.
Two points:
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
Oh you can yell fire in a crowded theatre, it is up to the other people to decide whether you are a dickhead or telling the truth.
Just for the record, you may want to go read up on some Supreme Court decisions. Your statement is false.
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
The true community of slashdot is 100% behind you.
Trevor, I'm not quite sure how you judge yourself to be a member of the "true Slashdot community." Judging by your user ID # (high 100k's) it seems that you haven't really been around here all that long.
Of course, that's not the only criterion to judge community membership by. I freely admit that I haven't been around much longer than you have (but then again, I don't claim to be part of the group that knows what's best for Slashdot). However, I don't think you or I really have much of a right to claim that the trolls, many of whom post at 0 or -1, irrevocably end any serious attempt at conversation. Don't like what they have to say? Raise the threshold and ignore them. They're making fun of you? Ignore them. If you don't like what the trolls are doing, ignore them.
Ugh. I've probably been trolled myself right here (and look at how quickly I disregard my own advice!) But I'm getting a little tired of people claiming that the trolls are ruining Slashdot. Hate to break it to you, but they're more a part of it than you or me.
I agree with /. Slandering someone is illegal, as is posting copywritten information without the consent of the copyright holders.
Funny then why Andover files a lawsuit against the person slandering and hires a lawyer to defend itself after it has posted copyrighted information (read the MS Kerberos spec)
(All this is assuming, of course, that the original post was not a Troll which made up facts - not something I'm sure of)
Mmmm.. Donuts
Actually, according to this sciam article, they already located one gamma ray burst....
Also possibly of interest is yesterdays astronomy picture of the day.
When I first read the headline I thought some hacker had hijacked a few satellites and used them to some useful purpose.
But according to the article, they are using technology in a different and new direction to spot these 'gamma rays'.
We need a different headline; like 'Fishing for Gamma Rays'
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
Hulk not have link! Hulk Smash Page!!!!!
I actually fell asleep reading this post it was so damn boring.
Intelligent Design Theory is not Creationism
leave it up to nasa to spend billions of dollars in spacecraft that they crash into planets (or moons, or just lose completely) and simultaneously use a hacked together string of satellites (which have a completely unrelated reason to be in space) to do anything of any real value. YAY NASA!
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
who'dathunk it.
Now how much you wanna bet a CNNbot will say Cracking Satelites for Science perverting the whole Hacker/Cracker debate beyond the point of ridicule?
Ah well it's nice to see a story that doesn't make me want to say 9 Nine Hail Marys.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Can someone explain, since the site isn't that technical in communication protocal, how they can track the blast in a few seconds, when it will take maybe years to be seen (depending on where it goes off at)...
Also, doesn't it take a few seconds to ping satalites 300k miles away?
--Brandon
I recently attended a lecture on this by Dr. Bruce Banner! Anyone have a link to his page?
Black holes colliding?
Hypernovas?
Or just Tarkin demonstrating the Death Star, the Ultimate Power in the Universe?
---
I posted this before, but I'm going to repost it here because I think it contains some valid points that we need to think about:
- - - - - - - - - -
I know many of you are thinking, as I did, this is just another elaborate troll, but I did a little research and it turns out there is definitely strange activity going on in the troll camps (look back about 1-2 weeks in that sid to see what I mean).
I know quite a bit about how trolls typically operate, and I can tell you straight off that this is not typical behavior. I'm not so sure I buy this Andover lawsuit thing, but something is happening here. Before you all go off half cocked writing letters to the staff OR going nuts with moderating everything as "Troll" I think we need to find out what's really going on.
Consider that all of this has happened in the last 2 weeks:
- Penis Bird Man
- A hostile, anti-troll sid
- Substantial increase in the number of spam kiddies on slashdot
- The troll's main home on
/. abandoned by all the regulars - A new sid was created, and is dominated by the spam kiddies
- Prior to abandoning the original k22320inchfan there was much talk of a stalker, similar to what happened on TrollTalk. No, this is not bullshit. Ask around if you weren't here then.
- The Steve Woston trolls dried up suddenly
- That bit about Natalie's birthday is also 100% true. All the troll posts got slapped to -1, and therefore weren't archived, but it did happen. For about 4 hours nobody could post to that story
Now, whatever the case really is here, we definitely need to calmly begin understanding what is actually going on.