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A Supernova In Red/Blue Plaid, Please
Snotnose writes "The New York Times is reporting that scientists have found a a supernova factory . From the article, scientists estimated that the cluster alone, which contains up to a million stars, probably produces a supernova once every two years. That is a rate 50 times higher than usual in entire galaxies. Stars explode in Earth's home galaxy, the Milky Way, only once in a century.. Sounds pretty awesome.
"
That's alot of Blam
"Most supernovae are industrial accidents."
So this actually happened 140 million years ago...
Slashdot is just now reporting on it? News from the 'mysterious future', indeed.
/sig
*Boom*
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
From what I remember in Astronomy class, the only known way blackholes are known to form are after a supernova explosion. This can make for an interesting study on blackholes.
Breaking News:
SCO has announced that is has claim to all IP related to supernovae. SCO claims it bought the rights to view and reproduce all supernovae images from NASA back in 1996. Another suit, targetted against the Catholic Church is insurance in case there really is a God that created the supernovae. If so, then God will be part of a future lawsuit.
Being that NASA uses UNIX computers to do much of it's work, SCO is also including IBM, Novell, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson as defendents in the filings.
Further updates as we get them.
Trolling is a art,
For those of you who dislike the New York Times subscription requirement, here is a link to a google news search of related articles.
Perhaps in the Future, when all these stars have gone supernova, it will be refered to as "The Maw Cluster"
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
about a quip involving stellar flatulence and the consumption of inordinate quantities of n-dimensional beans, but it was too nebulous...
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Nothing, unless that cluster is where the Star Wars galaxy is. Then it'll prolly sound like BOOOOM. :-)
This was covered two days ago by space.com. They have pictures and good for people who didn't register on NYT.
Please direct all bug reports to
The History of the World. (Score:1, Funny)
by Anonymous Coward on 23:58 Saturday 24 May 2003 (#6032631)
2.5 million B.C.: OOG the Open Source Caveman develops the axe and releases it under the GPL. The axe quickly gains popularity as a means of crushing moderators' heads.
100,000 B.C.: Man domesticates the AIBO.
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1750 B.C.: Hammurabi, a Mesopotamian king, codifies the first EULA.
490 B.C.: Greek city-states unite to defeat the Persians. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the Greeks "get it".
399 B.C.: Socrates is convicted of impiety. Despite the efforts of freesocrates.com, he is forced to kill himself by drinking hemlock.
336 B.C.: Fat-Time Charlie becomes King of Macedonia and conquers Persia.
4 B.C.: Following the Star (as in hot young actress) of Bethelem, wise men travel from far away to troll for baby Jesus.
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A.D. 1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the church door and is promptly moderated down to (-1, Flamebait).
A.D. 1553: "Bloody" Mary ascends the throne of England and begins an infamous crusade against Protestants. ESR eats his words. A.D. 1588: The "IF I EVER MEET YOU, I WILL KICK YOUR ASS" guy meets the Spanish Armada.
A.D. 1603: Tokugawa Ieyasu unites the feuding pancake-eating ninjas of Japan.
A.D. 1611: Mattel adds Galileo Galilei to its CyberPatrol block list for proposing that the Earth revolves around the sun.
A.D. 1688: In the so-called "Glorious Revolution", King James II is bloodlessly forced out of power and flees to France. ESR again triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy "gets it".
A.D. 1692: Anti-GIF hysteria in the New World comes to a head in the infamous "Salem GIF Trials", in which 20 alleged GIFs are burned at the stake. Later investigation reveals that mayn of the supposed GIFs were actually PNGs.
A.D. 1769: James Watt pa
the supermassive blackholes found near the centers of some (most?) galaxies are not (as far as we /know/) formed from a supernova explosion.
If I recall correctly...
Mmmm......sacrelicious.
Although two factories have been built, and ISO certified, they are still looking for a suitable shipping entity with hubs in all five local galaxies. The Domestic Project Manager, Color Supernova Commercial Division, Rich Fortuna, was quoted as saying "All it takes is one damaged-in-transit supernova and this entire circus is history."
Previous attempts at supernova mass production have met with failed rollouts and buyer chagrin. It is hoped that when all seven of these new style star factories are online, 3 and 4 G supernova will be readily available throughout this part of the Universe.
Step 2: One alien says, "Imaging a Beowulf cluster of these...."
Step 3: BOOM!
I knew it! Those prophetic Gallagher brothers in Oasis predicted the whole thing!
Oh, my bad, that's only for non-subscribers.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Anyone else think that this is Kip Durron running around with the Sun Crusher?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I have been to Cal Poly SLO. There is no life there.
Life in Orange County
Of course, Captain Janeway would tell you that these sorts of things are caused by wars in the Q Continuum...
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
Apparently the New York Times likes to plagarize... Bill Bryson's new book "A Short History of Nearly Everything" devotes a few pages in chapter 13 to Arp 299 and even calls it a "Supernova Factory." Interesting...
Other sites have pictures as well as not needing registration.
Slap slap slap
x...read Red/Blue Plaid as Red/Blue Pill?
The Matrix definetly has me...
So that's then 32h times higher than usual. We geeks don't like decimal, right?
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Obligatory quote:
Barf: What the hell was that?
Lone Starr: Spaceball 1.
Barf: They've gone to plaid.
there are plenty of cows
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
Sure, we licensed them to look at an image once.
TNANR, Twitter is not a NASA rep. until NASA pays his retainer fee.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
And without formatting!!! Way to go troll!!!
Sounds like a alpha galaxy (1 crash/bang every 2 years). Our galaxy (the milky way) sounds like beta galaxy (1 crash/bang every 100 years). Hopefully there's a stable galaxy out there somewhere :)
-?-
1. What is the yield of this process technology?
2. Does this yield go up as the process matures?
3. Does Moore's Law apply to supernova production?
4. Can you get a refund/exchange on dud supernovas, or do they just provide firmware updates?
5. Are supernovas legal for use in 4th of July celebrations in states that otherwise permit fireworks?
6. Does the EPA regulate supernovas, or do they fall under BATF?
7. Do you need a CCW permit to carry a concealed supernova?
8. Are supernova futures traded on the NASDAQ yet?
9. Have the Democrats figured out a way to tax supernovas (since they fall in the highest out-go bracket)?
10. Have the Republicans managed to regulate what supernovas can do in the privacy of their own interstellar gas clouds?
11. Can the RIAA/MPAA use the DMCA to sue supernovas suspected of being P2P traders?
Yes, where are the real answers?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It's simple. Just replace the "www" in the url with "archive" and you'll never need to register. Of course, you'll have to find the article when you get there.
Note: IANAC (I am not a cosmologist)
Big assed star, runns out of hydrogen starts burning helium, gets bigger, runs out of helium, reuns through all the elements up to iron, iron fusion takes energy, dosent give it. Interior of star runs out of energey, heat/light pressure go away, nothing supporting mass against pull.
Now, if the star is less than 3 times our suns size(i think) it kind bounces in, rebounds out in a supernova and leaves a white dwarf star behind.
If it is great er than that, it doent rebound, it keeps going into a black hole.
ALso, black holes may have been formed during the big bang.
Im pretty sure theyll happen anywhere enough mass gets together. Thats why you should really clean out the garage.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
The surprise here is the rate of supernovae going off in that tiny volume. One cluster, one million stars, and a supernova every two years. In our galaxy, we're still waiting for one since the days of Galileo and Tycho, probably an average rate of one every century or so. And this is with Billions and Billions (TM) of stars in our galaxy!
So that is a pretty big surprise. And it is a VLBA result: very cool. (The standard analogy for the VLBA resolution is the ability to pick out Roosevelt's eye on a dime held up in LA while you are standing in New York...)
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
It would be cool if I could blow myself up, then have all my molecules whirl back together to regenerate me. That would be a trip.
Just keep eating twinkies and sitting in front of a computer all day.
If you can prevent Jerry Springer from cutting a hole in your house to tow you to his set, you will eventually have a gravity well large enough to accomplish your goal!
Good Luck!
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Step 4: Profit!!!
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
How do galaxies get to the point of collision? If the universe began with the big bang that would indicate material being thrown outwards from a source point in pretty much an even pattern. As they continue to go outwards the space between them would increase, not decrease. Now, I know the debate about "are we expanding forever or not" but can someone in a nut shell explain to me what would cause a galaxy to alter trajectory so much as to collide with another - especially after this much time from the big bang? Thanks.
Sounds pretty awesome.
I was going to say, "Sounds like a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there." Then I realized that the frequent huge doses of ionizing radiation would probably wreak havoc on television reception and other things. So maybe it's not even a nice place to visit. And I'm just sure I couldn't live there for very long.
When all you have is an axe, everything looks like a grindstone.
Anyone remember that episode of Andromeda where some evil dictator acquires weapons of mass destruction that can take out entire stars? Maybe that's what's going on there, they're just testing & stuff...
[o]_O
Hmmmm...is it only me who finds it a bit suspicious that it's the New York Times that's reporting this?
The old axiom "fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice, shame on me" comes to mind.
ruriruri
www.redsails.org
NY Times access without having to register:
Username: slashdot.com
Password: slashdot.com
Hopefully that will work for a whole mass of people logging in. Easy to remember. Take that, NYT >:) Pass it along.
The book describes a species of aliens who see in many more colors than we do. One color, commonly found in sunsets, is translated into English as "plaid."
If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend it. It's arguably the best book by one of the brightest authors out there. He's the only author where I can't find anything to quibble about concerning his computer science. [Sample Chapter]
Sounds pretty awesome
Not if you happen to live there....
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
If you can prevent Jerry Springer from cutting a hole in your house to tow you to his set, you will eventually have a gravity well large enough to accomplish your goal!
Oh yeah, then I'll be a big bloated sack of aaalllll man...
I'm too sexy for my gravity well!
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
First off the space.com story alternated between calling the galaxy Arp 229 and Arp 299 which totally confused my astronomer self.
.Arp 299 is one of the galaxies calssified as a starburst galaxy, meaning we see lots of star formation going on in Arp 299. People saw how much star formation with ISO and we'll be looking at it with SIRTF after we launch. It's thought that supernovae can trigger star formation by the shocks from the explosion disturbing the gas clouds and making them unstable. Of course the multiwavelength data is needed to test this theory and this radio data combined with the optical and infrared will be a good first start. . . .
BUT. .
Damn.. I was sure this article was going to tell where I can go for torrents now.
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
I've often thought the same thing explains the black holes in the middle of the galaxies. It's just a large furnace. All you have to do is give stars a nudge in the right direction, and eventually harness the X-rays and whatnot from the star being crushed as it falls in. There have, in the last few years, been more reports of regions in space where unusual things like this are happening: supernovae or black holes forming at vastly higher rates than normally seen.
Over millions of years, advanced societies will need increasing amounts of energy. Black holes and supernovae are the only ways to supply that energy. They fly around, and gather all the unneeded stars, and coast them towards a fiery and energy-emitting death.
Finishing off this thought, I figure the easiest way to push a star is to build a giant, Dyson-like sphere around it, and have a hole in one end where all the gases must escape.
yo.
A.D. 2001: War was beginning!
P.S.: Best. Troll. Ever.
"A.D. 1948: Slashdot runs the infamous headline "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN." Shamefaced, the site quickly retracts the story when numerous readers point out that it is not news for nerds, stuff that matters."
You missed one
A.D. 1949: CmdrTaco posts the article "TRUMAN DEFEATED BY DEWEY."
I'm probably picking nits here, but doesn't it sound odd to speak of a "supernova factory"? It makes as much sense as a moldy bread factory or a worn tire factory. A supernova is the death of a star after a long life, it makes no sense to suggest that this cluster is stamping 'em out. Better to say that at one time this was a star factory, producing shiny new stars which are/were dying at relatively the same time.
It's right next door to Magrathea.
....Bethanie....
Its more "negative pressure", not really less than zero. When things explode they have a negative pressure (because they are expanding). When things are imploding, it means they have a positive pressure (i.e. there is pressure exerted on them).
That's how I understand it, at least.
Sorry. I meant more than zero. I'm not sure how "less" got in there. I think that I was originally going to say "vacuum goes from perfect to less than perfect" but then I realized space wasn't a perfect vacuum, and changed to pressure from vacuum but didn't change the "less" to "more".
Now I hope hope I make more silly mistakes like that.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I think it's much more likely Star Wars VII: The Empire lays the Smack Down being made. I hear there's a super-duper star destroyer in that one, and it finally actually does destroy stars. The Empire seems pissed....
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
even more amazing (and funnier) is that the NYT's article is ommited from the displayed results.
and further, that the link to the slashdot article rates higher..
Stars explode in Earth's home galaxy, the Milky Way, only once in a century.
I thought that was common knowledge.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
For instance, gravitational tides resulting from merging galaxies could change a distant circular orbit between two stars, one a white dwarf, the other a red giant, into an elliptical orbit, resulting in a higher rate of mass accretion from the red giant. By the way, mass accretion happens when a white dwarf steals mass from a nearby red giant. Once it reaches 1.4 solar masses, kaboom.
Hence, if gravitational interactions between merging galaxies causes supernovae, then it promotes a clear case that we should find a high rate of supernova formation in older galaxies. This hasn't been definitively proven yet, but there is some strong evidence to support that. There also may be some other factors, such as the elements that dominate the galaxy, as well as its age.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
As usual, the Astronomy Picture Of the Day has a very nice picture and explination of this.
And as a bonus, today's APOD is one of the kewlest sunset pictures I've ever seen.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
> Why is it that if the production rate of supernovae is one ever two years, that there aren't thousands or millions of supernovae in that cluster to be observed?
Ummm, IANAM(athemetician), but I would think that if something happens once every 500 days or so, and the supernova takes maybe a year (guess) to complete, that there would only 1-3 visible at any given (average) time.
Unless, after a supernova happened, you would be able to "see it" for a thousand years.
That brings up an interesting question that most people here probably know: How long does the whole process take? After it has collapsed and starts to explode, how long is it visible? And I don't mean "visible" in the night sky - I am talking about telescopes of course.
Wow what a great troll. We need to get this troll to write a fucking trolling book so the lame ass trolls can get a clue and the real trolls can get paid :)
Just to be anal because I feel like it today, a plaid is a sort of sash come toga wrapped around the upper body in traditional highland dress. It is a garment not a cloth pattern. The family of cloth patterns used by the highland clans is called tartan. To quote this page:
Originally, the Scottish Tartan was a distinction of rank or position. It was not identified by weave but by the number of colours in the weave. If only one colour was used it depicted a servant, two, a farmer rank, three, an officer rank, five, a chieftain, six for a poet, and seven for a Chief. Eventually, clans or families adopted their own tartan, using a range of animal and earth colours which were frequently secret, only known to the weavers of the islands. They included yellows, blues, whites, greens, browns, reds, black and purple. Some say that a keen eye can identify the colour with a particular island, almost like a wine taster can identify the year and the vineyard.