Slashdot Mirror
Hypernova Erupts as Global Telescopes Scramble
An anonymous reader writes "The remarkable Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment [ROTSE] telescopes have tracked a 2 billion year old hypernova, from which an intense gamma ray burst reached earth on March 29. From Carl Akerlof, the ROTSE investigator: "The optical brightness of this gamma ray burst is about 100 times more intense than anything we've ever seen before." To underscore how the sun never rises on this automated telescope network, the observations switched rapidly from New South Wales in Australia back to Fort Davis, Texas, over a 12 hour burnout of the collapsing black hole."
Hey, if they had started with kilonova after the normal nova, meganova would be ok. But they choose supernova. And hyper>super.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
"To underscore how the sun never rises on this automated telescope network, the observations switched rapidly from New South Wales in Australia back to Fort Davis, Texas..."
yeah, but if it were september would we even know it happened?
IANAA but, it seems that even if you always have someone looking into the night sky, it's only half of the sky - you cant see the side where the sun is untill later in the year.
now if we could somehow drop a satellite telescope behind in orbit around the sun about 6 months behind us and another 3 months behind (for line of sight comms) we could get a more complete picture of our neiborhood year round.
or...i could be completly ignorant.
perhaps the same explanation as what happens when you wave a laser pointer across the moon (assuming you have powerful enough to see at that distance).
You need to remember that nothing is breaking the speed of light barrier here because we're talking about different parts of the explosion: because the explosion is taking place so far away distances get amplified - simple trig. It's all in the angles. Think about cones.
Of course I might not know what I'm talking about either, or am answering a question different from the one you asked.
"If you concentrated all the energy that the sun will put out over its entire 9 billion-year life into a tenth of a second, then you would have some idea of the brightness."
The key phrase here is then you would have some idea. Frankly, there is a point in astronomy and astrophysics where things get so big, and so fast, and so bright, that the only idea that remains in one's brain when trying to imagine such phenomena is a white light with a big hand reaching into it. The example above is classic: first I have to imagine 9 billion years (good luck, I can't even remember what happened yesterday) and then I have to imagine a tenth of a second, which is like a total brain fart. And then, and only then, would I have some idea of the brightness. Well, I guess that I would have some idea if my head hadn't imploded while trying to imagine that nanofart called a "tenth of a second." Geezus.
The Death Penalty: Killing people to show others that killing people is wrong.
Well... when you ever wanted the answer to Fermi's Paradox ("if they existed, they'd be here") - this may well be it. More-or-less regular events like this, purging a sphere of maybe 5000 LY clean of any higher forms of life may explain why we never see any traces of other advanced lifeforms (no radio signals etc.), especially if we presume that there's no practical FTL drive even remotely possible. Maybe there is simply not enough time for any possible civilization to be noticed within our timeframe before they get extinguished. Also, it'd be easy to imagine the astronomers to be slightly wrong in their predictions about the deadliness of Eta Carinae - our own extinction might already be underway... And, as I understand it, there may be events much much worse than that... Regards, scotchco
What would you rather they say... "felt" before? :)
I think he means "seen" in the same manner as "observed" or "recorded".
It's good that the universe is so much bigger than our minds. We'll never stop being amazed.
And are you suggesting we don't need to worry about sterilizing half the planet?