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A Supernova In Red/Blue Plaid, Please

Posted by Hemos on from the build-it-for-them dept.

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. "

24 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. Arthur C. Clarke said: by chessnotation · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Most supernovae are industrial accidents."

    1. Re:Arthur C. Clarke said: by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

      Most supernovae are industrial accidents.

      Perhaps they are the firey end of foolish civalizations winning the Ultimate Darwin Award by doing
      miniture black hole experiments.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  2. Old news... by Mondoz · · Score: 5, Funny
    The supernova factory is in merging galaxies, known as Arp 299, which is 140 million light-years from Earth.

    So this actually happened 140 million years ago...
    Slashdot is just now reporting on it? News from the 'mysterious future', indeed.

    --
    /sig
    1. Re:Old news... by fobbman · · Score: 5, Funny

      Not quite. This is actually a repost from about 83 million years ago.

    2. Re:Old news... by alkali · · Score: 4, Funny
      So this actually happened 140 million years ago...
      Slashdot is just now reporting on it?

      No, actually, it was reported then, too. I'm afraid this story is yet another duplicate.

      [ A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away ...

      -1.4E08 11:23:45 Holy crap! Our star is exploding! (articles,science) (rejected) ]

  3. Possible blackhole observatory by phaetonic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Possible blackhole observatory by Mondoz · · Score: 5, Informative
      http://plabpc.csustan.edu/astro/stars/holes.htm

      This page explains the link between Black holes & Supernovas...

      When stars of very large mass explode in a supernova, they leave behind a core which is so massive (greater than about 3 solar masses) that it cannot be stabilized against gravitational collapse by an known means, not even neutron degeneracy. Such a core is detined to collapse indefinitely until it forms a black hole, and object so dense that nothing can escape its gravitational pull, ot even light.

      --
      /sig
    2. Re:Possible blackhole observatory by Michael+Woodhams · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't think this is accurate.

      Certainly it is a reasonable hypothesis that a very massive star might create a black hole when it supernovas. I don't know what the latest computer models say about it, nor do I know how reliable those models are believed to be - this stuff is hard to model right.

      Merging neutron stars are also likely to form black holes, and a neutron start that was accreting mass from a companion star could also.

      Our best evidence for black holes is for supermassive ones at the centers of galaxies. These would be the result of a long period of growth by swallowing stars. We can't know now where the original 'seed' black hole came from, but the vast majority of its mass did not come from a supernova.

      (I have a PhD in astronomy, but haven't done any for 10 years.)

      This looks like a job for Stupendous Man.

      --
      Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
  4. Breaking News by grub · · Score: 5, Funny


    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,
  5. Links to articles through google by dprice · · Score: 4, Informative

    For those of you who dislike the New York Times subscription requirement, here is a link to a google news search of related articles.

  6. In space? by Achoi77 · · Score: 5, Funny
    Dunno what it sounds like.

    Nothing, unless that cluster is where the Star Wars galaxy is. Then it'll prolly sound like BOOOOM. :-)

    1. Re:In space? by istartedi · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Actually, when the gas goes by the pressure goes from zero to something less than zero. The supernova does indeed have a sound, and it probably is some kind of "boom" full of turbulent white noise. Of course, that sound never reaches us in any meaningful way, and if it did we'd probably all be dead.

      IIRC, one of the NASA probes once recorded the sound caused by interractions in the rarified gas associated with Jupiter's intense magnetic fields.

      So yes, there are indeed acoustic waves in space. It's just that they aren't like the atmospheric waves we are used to. That doesn't mean they aren't sound. You can't hear very well under water, but dolphins can. You wouldn't say that the ocean is silent just because humans have lousy hearing there. Likewise, we shouldn't say that space is silent just because the pressure is extremely low and we'd immediately die there.

      That said, given that space is almost a vacuum, you can't produce sound in the usual manner. You have to introduce a gas into space that allows sound to propogate, and a supernova does just that.

      --
      For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
    2. Re:In space? by mperrin · · Score: 4, Informative
      IAAA (I Am An Astrophysicist) and
      Actually, when the gas goes by the pressure goes from zero to something less than zero.

      is flat-out wrong. Negative pressures do show up in certain exotic bits of physics, yes, but the interstellar medium isn't one of them.

      It's only an approximation to say that the pressure in space is zero. Very, very low, sure, but pressure will be some small positive number anywhere there exists an appreciable amount of gas (which is pretty much everywhere, actually). The pressure in the local ISM is something like 10e-19 bars, give or take a bit. As far as human hearing goes, that's certainly low enough to be effectively zero, but pressure waves can and do still exist, at positive but low pressures, albeit at frequencies and volumes far far below anything we could detect by ear.

      In fact, it's very useful to think of the intersteller medium as a sort of atmosphere surrounding the galaxy, complete with high and low pressure zones resulting from differential heating, winds and superwinds blowing between those regions, "weather" of a sort along the boundaries between regions of different temperatures, and so on. For more detail (a *lot* more detail) check out Spitzer's Physical Processes in the Interstellar Medium or Osterbrock's Astrophysics of Gaseous Nebulae and Active Galactic Nuclei, hopefully available at your local university library.

  7. This was at space.com by DJ+Rubbie · · Score: 4, Informative

    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 /dev/null
  8. A Brief History of the World - now with comments! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    10,000 B.C.: Civilization begins when early farmers first learn to cultivate hot grits.

    3000 B.C.: Sumerians develop a primitive cuneiform perl script.

    2920 B.C.: A legendary flood sweeps Slashdot, filling up a Borland / Inprise story with hundreds of offtopic posts.

    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.

    A.D. 476: The Roman Empire BSODs.

    A.D. 610: The Glorious MEEPT!! founds Islam after receiving a revelation from God. Following his disappearance from Slashdot in 632, a succession dispute results in the emergence of two troll factions: the Pythonni and the Perliites.

    A.D. 800: Charlemagne conquers nearly all of Germany, only to be acquired by andover.net.

    A.D. 874: Linus the Red discovers Iceland.

    A.D. 1000: The epic of the Beowulf Cluster is written down. It is the first English epic poem.

    A.D. 1095: Pope Bruce II calls for a crusade against the Turks when it is revealed they are violating the GPL. Later investigation reveals that Pope Bruce II had not yet contacted the Turks before calling for the crusade.

    A.D. 1215: Bowing to pressure to open-source the British government, King John signs the Magna Carta, limiting the British monarchy's power. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy "gets it".

    A.D. 1348: The ILOVEYOU virus kills over half the population of Europe. (The other half was not using Outlook.)

    A.D. 1420: Johann Gutenberg invents the printing press. He is immediately sued by monks claiming that the technology will promote the copying of hand-transcribed books, thus violating the church's intellectual property.

    A.D. 1429: Natalie Portman of Arc gathers an army of Slashdot trolls to do battle with the moderators. She is eventually tried as a heretic and stoned (as in petrified).

    A.D. 1478: The Catholic Church partners with doubleclick.net to launch the Spanish Inquisition.

    A.D. 1492: Christopher Columbus arrives in what he believes to be "India", but which RMS informs him is actually "GNU/India".

    A.D. 1508-12: Michaelengelo attempts to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling with ASCII art, only to have his plan thwarted by the "Lameness Filter."

    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

  9. Survey says by djupedal · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  10. See what happens? by Lord+Grey · · Score: 5, Funny
    Step 1: Advanced aliens create gigantic computers that generate so much heat -- much like some Intel chips -- that they resemble stars.

    Step 2: One alien says, "Imaging a Beowulf cluster of these...."

    Step 3: BOOM!

    --
    // Beyond Here Lie Dragons
    1. Re:See what happens? by TrekkieGod · · Score: 5, Funny

      Hand over your /. membership card, pal...you forgot 2 steps

      Step 1: Advanced aliens create gigantic computers that generate so much heat -- much like some Intel chips -- that they resemble stars.

      Step 2:One alien says, "Imaging a Beowulf cluster of these...."

      Step 3: BOOM!

      Step 4: ???

      Step 5: Profit!

      --

      Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.

  11. Pictures by henrygb · · Score: 5, Informative

    Other sites have pictures as well as not needing registration.

  12. The Important Questions...narf by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 5, Funny
    The article fails to answer the important questions for us all.

    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."
  13. Why this is important... by pq · · Score: 5, Interesting
    So I'm seeing lots of funny stuff, but no serious comments. Okay, we knew about supernovae, and we knew that where there is star formation, sooner or later there will be star death and supernovae as well. No freaking big deal, right?

    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."
  14. NY Times Slashdot.com Universal Username/Password by ee_moss · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  15. Other reasons Arp 299 is interesting. . . by astrobabe · · Score: 5, Interesting

    First off the space.com story alternated between calling the galaxy Arp 229 and Arp 299 which totally confused my astronomer self.

    BUT. . .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. . . .

  16. Re:I got sunburned by stwrtpj · · Score: 5, Funny
    Not if you happen to live there....

    I hear that using sunblock rated at least SPF 3.4e+25 helps with that.

    --
    Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)