A Shocking Space Movie

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Posted by michael on Friday September 20, 2002 @04:41AM from the cosmic-war dept.

MagnetarJones writes "Multiple observations made over several months with the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope captured the spectacle of matter and antimatter propelled to nearly the speed of light by the Crab pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star the size of Manhattan. "Through this movie, the Crab Nebula has come to life," says Jeff Hester of Arizona State University."

7 of 29 comments (clear)

Try these links.. by molo · 2002-09-20 05:11 · Score: 4, Informative

These are the links you want:

movies
article/images
more images

Can someone mirror these?

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My quicktime install must be broken... by tswinzig · 2002-09-20 06:40 · Score: 3, Funny

...no sound.

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"And like that ... he's gone."
More information about the anti-matter? by jerde · 2002-09-20 06:53 · Score: 3, Interesting

So in typical Slashdot fashion, they talk about the stream of anti-matter.

It's only mentioned briefly in the actual article as well:

"The jet looks like steam from a high-pressure boiler," said David Burrows of Penn State, another coauthor of the paper, "except when you realize you are looking at a stream of matter and anti-matter electrons moving at half the speed of light!"

So how do they know that one of these streams is made up of anti-electrons?

Ira Flatow is having a conversation about anti-matter on Science Friday as I'm typing this. It's a fascinating topic, so I always hate to see it just glossed over in press releases like this.

- Peter

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INsigNIFICANT
1. Re:More information about the anti-matter? by Muad'Dave · 2002-09-20 07:05 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Maybe because they're moving at identical speeds in opposite directions under the influence of a magnetic field?
  
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2. Re:More information about the anti-matter? by guybarr · 2002-09-21 21:22 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Maybe because they're moving at identical speeds in opposite directions under the influence of a magnetic field?
  
  I'm not really sure. How do they know the magnetic configurstion around that N.S. ? and besides, these waves are supposed, AFAI understand, to be composed of electron-positron plasmas, I sincerely doubt they have the resolution required to plot single particles' trajectories ...
  
  My guess is that such a claim is probably based on spectroscopy :
  
  1) take a strong wavelength
  2) substruct (probably do some kind of reverse integral transform) doppler,
  3) get e+-e- anhilation energy
  4) 1+2+3 => e+-e- plasma portion.
  
  I can't reasonably think on any other plausible way, but then again, I'll be glad to find out ...
  
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Not very compact files by Tablizer · 2002-09-20 18:23 · Score: 3, Interesting

They did a poor job of packaging those moving images IMO.

There appear to be only about half a dozen frames to each one. It does not take near 1+ meg to make an AVI or MPEG that has only 6 frames. Granted, they gave a "zoom" view and repeated it enough times to make movement clear, but this is not worth long download times for us poor modem users.

They could have made some nice animated GIF's even with so few frames. Animated GIFs will do the repetition without having to store copies of the repeated frames. IOW, by-reference loops. I bet a roughly 300x300 pixel animated GIF would only take up about 100 to 400 meg for the same quality, since the colors tend to be monochromatic in those. (If they had a lot of colors, then GIF palletes tend to get ugly.)

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Re:Weird units: What a small star by hackwrench · 2002-09-21 07:45 · Score: 3, Informative

From: "Koczor, Ron"

To: 'Robert Claypool '
Subject :
RE: Crab pulsar article

Actually, based on the comments we've received from readers, the
comparison was a good one. Our intention was to demonstrate to people the
"size" of the star. And I think most people understood that we were talking
about size as the diameter of the star. Most people think of the size of
astronomical objects in linear dimensions, not volume.

When people think of stars they think of massive objects bigger than
earth. By comparing it to a well-known earth landmark, the imagery of size
becomes clearer.

I'm sorry the comparison didn't work for you.

Ron

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Claypool
To: ron.koczor@msfc.nasa.gov
Sent: 9/20/02 6:34 PM
Subject: Crab pulsar article

This article:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/ 19sep_crab movie.htm?list139810
lists you as the responsible NASA official. It doesn't make sense to me why
there is a comparison between the Crab pulsar and Manhattan, especially in
the light of a lack of conventional figures, such as cubic kilometers and
kilograms. Further the Crab pulsar is a small star, while Manhattan is a big
city. Comparing them creates a dissonance in the sense of size one usually
tries to create when making such a comparison. I would appreciate it if NASA
took these into consideration in future articles.