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Scientists Accurately Predict Supernova

Posted by michael on from the don't-look-now dept.

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."

6 of 17 comments (clear)

  1. This image text kicks ass by fredrikj · · Score: 4, Funny

    Do gamma ray bursts cause mass extinctions? Without question, the answer is probably yes or no, according to the experts.

    Heh

  2. Predicting thunder upon seeing lightning by wowbagger · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

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    1. Re:Predicting thunder upon seeing lightning by RandomInAction · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I have to agree, I wondered how they could predict when light from an event they haven't seen, so don't know has occurred, will be detected. All they have done is join the dots, to form the line that the gamma burst precedes the supernova, and both are caused by the same event. So they are predicting a change in the dominant frequency of light rather than the arrival of it.

      However this is good evidence for their model, when it isn't known that lightning caused thunder to paraphrase. The line they've drawn dramatically points to the Cannonball theory as being accurate.

  3. A million years? by mike_mgo · · Score: 3, Funny
    It used to be when scientists predicted the time and date of when a star would explode, they might be off by a million years.

    Umm, how did they check their predictions again?

  4. GRB extinction by PhilHibbs · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Reading the linked article "Cosmic Cannon: How an Exploding Star Could Fry Earth", I'm left thinking... So what? It's not like there's anything we could even dream about doing about it, except maybe get off the planet so all our eggs aren't in one basket, and that isn't going to happen (a viable colony that can surive forever without us) for a long, long time. So, why even worry about it? If it happens, we won't even know it, except maybe briefly.

  5. Some more on this from the BBC by RandomInAction · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.