Scientists Accurately Predict Supernova

sckienle writes "Space.com has an article about a group of scientists who accurately predicted when the light of a supernova would reach Earth. (Ok, so they were only days ahead of the burst.) But this goes a fair way to confirming their model of supernovae."

Comments

Predicting thunder upon seeing lightning

[wowbagger]

The /. headline is misleading - the scientists did not predict the supernova. They predicted that the detection of gamma ray burst from the supernova would preceed the detection of the visible light from the supernova.

That would be roughly equivelent to predicting a clap of thunder upon seeing a flash of lightning. Granted, if you didn't know lightning caused thunder this would be a great thing, but it is hardly the same as predicting the lightning in the first place.

Don't get me wrong - this is still good science. But the /. headline was a bit misleading.

Some more on this from the BBC

[RandomInAction]

Making clear that: The prediction was the consequence of detecting a pulse of energy in the form of gamma rays from the same direction ten days earlier.