Slashdot Mirror
Huge Star Quake Rocks Milky Way
SJrX writes "The BBC is reporting that scientists have detected "the biggest explosion observed by humans within [the past 400 years]". The explosion luckily occured about 50,000 light years away form us, on the far side of the Milky Way, as the article goes on to say that had the explosion been within 10 light years of us, it "would possibly have triggered a mass extinction.""
Of course the existence of magnetars will place constraints on estimations of life on other planets like the Drake equation, and it might be useful to map out these sources of potential periodic radiation bursts to limit/make more efficient radio/laser surveys of the sky.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
The explosion luckily occured about 50,000 light years away form us, on the far side of the Milky Way, as the article goes on to say that had the explosion been within 10 light years of us, it "would possibly have triggered a mass extinction."
Yeah... that would have been a real loss.
(Yes folks, I'm just that bitter.)
I thought it was just that it was the biggest such explosion recorded by humans within the last 400 years.
just before the explosion:
"Damn you, you bloody baboon!"
Come on, give me a break. I've seen some of the science being done on this flare. There are enough cool things without being needlessly sensational, and invoking the Wipe-Out-All-Civilization radius definitely counts as sensational. After all, isn't the nearest magnetar something like 5 kiloparsecs away?
Microsoft delenda est!
I though that the New scientist article on it was a bit more informative.
10 light years is really close... Thats like only 3 times the distance form us to the sun.
Considering that it takes 8 mins for light from the sun to reach Earth, I think your calculations are a bit off.
365 days x 24 hours x 60 mins = 525600 mins/year
525600 mins/year x 10 years = 5256000 mins
5256000 mins / 8 mins = 6.57x10^6 times
Therefore 10 light years is actually 6.57x10^6 times the distance from us to the sun.
QED
Live forever, or die trying.
You should be a numerologist. You know, those people who ask you when you were born, and you answer "uuh... 4th of january, 1972", and they say "well, if you add 72 and 19, that makes 91 and you add 4 and 1, that makes five, and five plus 9 plus one gives you 96, modulus three, that's THREE!!!
THE HOLY TRINITY!!!
You are the chosen one, my son.
**ding**
Times up, that'll be $29.99 dear, my assistant will take your fee out front no cheques, only cash please. You can ask her for a receipt too. Thank you, come again!
Thanks goodness for Atmosphere. It has protected us once again!
ps. It happened in August 1998. Back then it was SGR1900+14. Apparently a weaker event, but it knocked our socks off back then.
Did anyone else think that maybe we just saw the end of a Disaster Area Concert from the back row?
had the explosion been within 10 light years of us, it "would possibly have triggered a mass extinction."
Dang! Extinction has an upside -- it would be nice to start over and ditch the red-state, blue-state stuff and perhaps come out better for starting anew. Maybe the next batch of primordial ooze will grow up smarter than us, and perhaps along the way find something less verbose than XML in the process!
...I regret to inform you that in order to make room for the hyperspace express route...
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
According to TFA this shit happened 50000 years ago. Is this some kind of slashdot record, posting news that mattered 50K years ago?
If anyone wants to cruise for mod points, you could do an order-of-magnitude estimate of the fraction of irradiated stars using the age and total volume of the Milky Way, the mean time between SGR flares of this magnitude (call it a decade to a century), and the radius of OMG-We're-All-Gonna-Die that was specified in the article.
Of course, the supernova explosion that led to a magnetar's formation would would have already done quite a bit of damage to the surrounding area, so they aren't likely to have any meaningful impact on any planetary systems around them anyway.
Microsoft delenda est!
This happened 50,000 years ago and it is just now being posted to Slashdot? :)
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Ya know, IANAPOAPOA (I Am Not A Physicist Or AstroPhysicist or Astronomer) but I'm willing to bet that if I were 160,000 kilometers from this object, or even our sun, I might be worried about other things than my credit cards getting wiped.
That's why YANAPOAPOA. I can imagine the interview.
"If you were 160,000 kilometers from this black hole... we'll, you'd be in space, so you'd be dead! So don't go there!"
Magnetic fields are difficult to characterize. What are you going to do, tell people the field is 1000000000000 Tesla? (Yawn, what's a Tesla?) You can't compare magnetic fields to hens eggs or Libraries of Congress. The only thing you can really do is compare them to a field strength that people are intuitively familiar with- like a refrigerator magnet's field, an MRI field, or a field sufficient to wipe magnetic cards. Refrigerator magnets and MRIs come in a variety of field strengths. Plus, smartasses would make comments about refrigerators and magnetic imaging machines in space.
At least it's not a repost. :D
This space intentionally left blank
From the article:
This is a once-in-a-lifetime event
I bet the aliens who lived less than 10 light-years from there couldn't possibly deny what you just said.
10 light years is 3 times the distance from earth to the sun? Light takes approx. 8 minutes to reach the earth from the sun. Thus, the earth is 8 light-minutes from the sun. Thus, the earth is not 3.33- light years from the sun.
If the sun was only 10 kilometres from your house, a mass extinction might occur.
Seriously, this has to be the most bizzare astronomy story tagline I've ever read. I figured this was the submitter's quote, or possibly the article writer - nope, it was from one of the physicists.
Why is it bizarre? When I read it I understood what he meant and why he said it. Light years are big. For anything ten light years distant to have a measurable effect on the Earth is pretty amazing!
The radiation intensity at the surface of the Sun is 63,000,000 watts per square meter. (Your 10 km makes no real difference.) The intensity 10 light years (10^17 m) away from a 10^40 watt source would be approx. 100,000 watts per square meter. So you'd have to be 25 solar radii away from the Sun for its radiation intensity to be equivalent to this magnetar if it were ten light years distant. (For comparison, mercury orbits at about 86 solar radii.) Nitpickers may note that the Sun is mostly radiating UV through IR, and the magnetar's energy is brief and in the gamma ray spectrum, but this is still impressive.
George W. Bush is now working with SETI to negotiate the disarmament of SGR 1806-20's WME's (Weapons of Mass Extinction).
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
How many piano tuners are there in Chicago? This is an example Fermi used to use. Yes, maybe you could go out and measure this, using the "job" field in tax returns, the yellow pages, etc., but you can also get an idea of the number by figuring out how many people live in Chicago. How many of those people on average have pianos? How often do they need tuning? How fast can they be tuned? You have a pretty good idea (or he did anyway) of the answers to those individual questions, you can put an estimate on the number without actually making a direct measurement. Some problems in science can be tackled this way, and it's a type of reasoning scientists ought to be able to use well.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
This is a series of emails that discuss the burst. Interesting posts include the following:
There were a series of small bursts observed before the big one, but no one seems to have realized that they were precursors until after the big one arrived. "During 21 December more than 30 SGR-like bursts were detected by Konus-Wind and Helicon-Coronas-F" satellites.
The burst was detected by the Mars Odyssey spacecraft. "A very preliminary analysis indicates that the arrival time at Odyssey is indeed consistent with an arrival direction from SGR1806-20."
There is also discussion of an Earth-orbiting satellite that did not have a direct view of the flare; however, it picked up a faint echo 7.70 seconds after everyone else saw it. "This value corresponds exactly to burst travelling time from the Wind to the Moon and back to the Coronas-F."
Finally, serendipious observations were made by spacecraft whose primary mission is solar observation. "The SGR was 5 degrees from RHESSI's pointing axis which was directed toward the Sun."
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
I guess I've observed there too many times for such a joke to be funny.
Especially when there's so many better jokes. Like, did you ever come out in the winter to see some guy with his tongue stuck to the sign, going "I thought they were inthructionth!"
You also don't mention what the road to Lick is paved with. Somehow I doubt it's good intentions.
My understanding is, at the densities we're talking about, the force of gravity is stronger than the nuclear forces of the atoms -- you get funny things like electron orbits being heavily deformed.
A spinning neutron star that's charged on one side more than another due to gravity pulling electrons around, would induce a magnetic field. Probably a damn strong one too, seeing the forces involved.