Slashdot Mirror
Brightest Galactic Flash Ever Detected Hits Earth
phenon writes "On December 27th scientists detected the largest cosmic blast to strike the Earth, actually altering the earths ionosphere briefly. MSNBC reports (along with Space.com), that this event happened from a magnetar 50,000 light years away from us, and if it had happened from a distance of 10 light years away, we would be talking about mass extinction here on earth. The cosmic ray blast was measured at 10,000 trillion trillion trillion watts of power!"
It's so bright, we can't even look at slashdot to see if it's been mentioned already!
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Dupe
When two postings of the same subject appear on slashdot.
Happens more often than you think
You don't say?
Dupe.
The first one hasn't even dropped off the front page yet.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
First post?
See http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/1 9/013255&tid=160
Is Slashdot a write-only service nowadays?
Pretty.
Do Slashdot editors even read Slashdot?
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
/. is always behind. /. had this story days ago.
This story is a Dupe from yesterday.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
... I gotta wear shades.
No, wait! It's only a dupe.
So the electromagnetic signal has reached us now...
Probably a mass of ionic particles will travel at a speed way below light speed, does anyone know when that blast is going to arrive, and if there is a way to pick it up using home electronics?
The cosmic ray blast was measured at 10,000 trillion trillion trillion watts of power!
You could have just written 10^40 watts.
My tinfoil hat is taking a real beating from all these cosmic rays!
Duplicate from Yesterday
Wake up and smell the Coffee
If there was ever a race between a Hare and a Turtle. You would be the hare... because while you were snoozing... the Turtle already posted this story.
slightly warmer than my new Pentium 4 laptop.
Yowza!
I am a leaf on the wind
Posted by Zonk on Friday February 18, @10:41PM Dupe
/. before posting ? Not even 24 hours yet and a dupe! Gah, is this a record? Who has the record?!
Do the editors read
See also from Friday - right here.
R(k)
This has been mentioned here already!
"Intellectual Property" should be an affront to anyone capable of independent thought.
dupe dupe dupe or earl
dupe dupe dupe of earl....
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Isn't this already on the front page?
For shame.
At least it wasn't on the front page anymore :-)
This was a completely irresponsible repost of a story less then 24 hours old. What the hell is up with the mods? I mean, come on! It's still on yesterday's news!
This is the first rehash of a story to actually make me lose my temper with the mods.
...that time warped and it seems like we're reading the same article twice in one day....
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.
'nuff said.
My username does not make me Apathetic. It's irony, get it?
I'll meet your dupe and raise you one inane comment.
I wish I could, but I just did. Damn
That explains the stretching arms...and my invisible girlfriend.
No wait..that's not right at all.
Okay, there, I said it.
So this happened 50,000 years ago, and it's only now being posted to SlashDot?
Gotta be a new record.
It's Bush's fault! It has to be! It's because of the SUV! Global warming! First the tsunami, now this!
... I could have sworn i've read about this 3 or 4 articles ago....
Clearly not a dupe: the first story was about the explosion, and this one's about the flash.
Bears don't normally eat things that talk and move backwards.
Okay, after one bright flash, I could logically attribute it to random galactic physics. These things happen in our universe.
But ANOTHER flash? And this one is ALSO the brightest galactic flash ever detected to hit Earth? There is only one answer for such an incredible coincidence of two brightest galactic flashes ever--the apocalypse is coming.
I am barracading myself in a small underground shelter near a mountain in Nevada. I invite any and all Slashdotters to come join me (preferrably females) and await the end of the world. Thank God for Slashdot; without it, I would have never had this incredible cosmic warning. Amen.
...as if millions of Slashdotters cried out "dupe", and were suddenly silenced.
Jeez, editors, we'll let you off having to search through the (broken) search feature before you post your latest, greatest headline, but d'ya think you could at least take a peek at the front page? The original story's less than 7 hours old...
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
they posted it twice!
The good news is, you'd be able to get a deal on microwave ovens.
In the beginning, there was one dupe story...
In the end, there were 10,000 comments swearing about it.
The magnetar's radiation scrambled the servers and that caused the duplication. No, really.
Attention deficit disorder stikes slashdot news at eleven. Latest information indicates a complete lack of caution until the next archane technology is revealed.
The light from it took longer to reach some slashdot editors than others
... Slashdot would have at LEAST TWO stories on it.
n/t.
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
The flash of the Trillion Trillion Trillion watts made em blind!
Slashdot Editors: MY EYES, THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!
duply down the duper.
Dupily dupily dupily dupily, \. is such a dupe.
All your base are belong to Google.
Another reminder why the human race needs to develop spaceships and colonize other worlds. Unfortunitly, no one will give a shit until it is too late to save ourselves.
Actually, I think this dupe is what scrolled the other one off the front page.
That has to be a record.
How come /. has so old news today? This particular one was already in the printed newspaper in Italy, La Repubblica (article). And the 6th sense thing was already printed a few days ago.
Isn't that how much power Intel's dual-core CPUs will use?
1.21 gigawatts?!
This calamity is based on a short story by the author of Blade Runner, Phillip Dick. Predicted hundreds of years ago, current scientists watch for this "new star". The day of reckoning comes and at first they think the new sun in the sky is their predicted source, but it turns out that is only the moon, reflecting brightly the oncoming holocaust.
Happily, the Slashdot story is less drastic than the Dick story, with the world being superheated by the light of the star that finally reaches earth.
dupe
Important Stuff
Please try to keep posts on topic.
Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads.
Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page)
If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account.
Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal.
With over 50 redundant "dupe" responses on slashdot, you'd think this story is becoming a DUPER-NOVA!
>and if it had happened from a distance of 10 light
>years away, we would be talking about mass
>extinction here on earth
Uh, no. If it had happened from a 10 light year distance we wouldn't be talking about anything at all!
50,000 years ago? I remember it like it was only yesterday.
Er....
For a second there, I had thought I had a sixth sense last night about something 50,000 lightyears away not being 10 lightyears away, and not killing us. But, no, I actually did read about this just before I went to bed, and had forgotten.
Assuming /. is using a database for its article entries (and if they aren't, wow, I'm surprised), should they implement a search function of keywords, forcing a mod to search for key words before posting?
I must be dreaming though... I mean, if they can't even read their own site, I very much doubt they'd bother searching before posting.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
C'mon folks, seriously. It's not even off of the front page yet.
Try not to let life get in the way of living.
DeputySpade (458056) has got some sixth sense.
"That it can reach out and tap us on the shoulder like this, reminds us that we really are linked to the cosmos," said Phil Wilkinson of IPS Australia, that country's space weather service.
First they make up this "story" about global warming and now this?!? Like we're supposed to feel some kind of link to the cosmos just because they tell us to?!? Damn activist scientists always pushing their agenda down our throats and making up terms like "cosmos" to scare us good consumers!
Story to repeat at 11
Can we have a new section dedicated to duplicate stories?
"The cosmic ray blast was measured at 10,000 trillion trillion trillion watts of power!"
That ought to get me up to 88mph so I can go home...
Why can't they write 10^xy or ten to the power of something or exa/peta/tera/whatever Watt? There _are_ technically inclined readers here. Especially in the science section.
My god, it's full of stars...
It seems that with every disaster that NASA or an astronomer discovers in the universe, the news always has to add, "If it were closer to Earth, we'd all be dead!"
Well, duh. I know that intergalactic disasters are a hard sell for primetime news, but is it really necessary to endanger Earth every f-ing time something in the universe blows up? As our ability to perceive and record these incidents gets better, it's going to get very tired, very fast. "Major sun flare on Alpha Centauri! If We Were Living on the Sun, We Would All Suffer First Degree Burns or More!"
Is it the news outlets adding the "If X was close to Earth we'd be dead" or is it the scientists seeking to justify their work? All this article writes is, "If the explosion had been within just 10 light-years, Earth could have suffered a mass extinction, it is said." Did the reporter's mom say that? Grr.
"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea." - DNA
"A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.'" - DNA
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Even though it's a dupe, this is the first time I saw this story. Now I know I'm thinking of correlations in the wild, but 10,000 trillion trillion trillion watts is a large amount of energy.
:)
Two days earlier, there was a massive earthquake. I wonder what part of the planet was facing the direction of the flash at that time? Who knows, we might have detected our first gravity wave...space-time might deform about 2 days in 50.000 years faster than light
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
At this rate it's only a matter of time before Earth is conquered by the Magnetars! All your base....
Ya know my first thought was along the lines of what can we do to detect or predict life destorying blasts in the future. Then my imediate next thought was that this would be totally useless without a flux capacitor if we try to stop it.
Or we could just put a planetary tinfoil hat on.
Or better yet, giant solar panels.
Either way I'm just going to sit here and drink my beer. I hate even mentioning labor on Saturday.
I'll try to submit this story to slashdot right now... Just to see if they'll post it AGAIN. :)
Cmon, I can understand that duplicate stories can happen, but in the same day!!??
perception is reality
Golly gawsh darn - what are odds that another one would occur today?!
If you go here and shrink your font a bit both summaries are readable at the same time.
Wow! 2 of those in 1 day!!! We're screwed... oh wait. only /. is screwed
by the way, I don't think that we should be calling them "editors" if they're not, you know, editing.
OMGWTFBBQ!
I just submited this story early today and it was rejec... no, wait...
I shot the sheriff
...getting through two mass extinctions in one day.
Scotty, we need more juice for the hyperbole detector.
This is old news. (Score:5, Funny) :)
:D
by JPriest (547211) on Saturday February 19, @12:06AM (#11720374)
(http://www.lp.org/quiz/)
This happened 50,000 years ago and it is just now being posted to Slashdot?
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Hey! (Score:5, Funny)
by DeputySpade (458056) on Saturday February 19, @12:20AM (#11720439)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday April 22, @08:09PM)
At least it's not a repost.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
This complaint is a dupe as well.
...its pretty much an interstellar release of flatulence
Dude, you've duped again...
rm
Sci-Fi Storm
BattleStar Galactica!
In gamma rays, the event equaled the brightness of the full Moon's reflected visible light
So if it had been closer, we all would have be turned into Hulks?
"I'm Spacey Spacem! The hits from one end of the universe to the other on Galactic Radio, now with over 10,000 trillion trillion trillion watts of power!"
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
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?
The cosmic ray blast was measured at 10,000 trillion trillion trillion watts of power!"
Reckon that's enough to power a P4?
So... my brand new P4 uses just a tad bit more power than that.
This is precisely why homo sapiens should be working on the spatial diversification of mother earth's DNA and not fighting petty little wars all over the globe.
The earth is a womb and the task of understanding, preserving and propogating life, especially intelligent self-aware life, falls to us, the advanced monkeys, since the cetaceans have not really been much help. As someone once said having all your DNA at the bottom of a gravity well, relying on single biosphere for all of your oxygen is not a good long term stategy.
Actually, I think this happened earlier this year, where the top story was a dupe of the top "older stuff" story. Truly sad. What do the subscribers think? Are either of you reading this? Would you pay for a newspaper that printed the exact same story two days in a row out of incompetence?
There's a pretty big difference between "10" and "50,000".
If you have to ask, you'll never know.
Dupe of URL,
Dupe, Dupe,
Dupe of URL, Dupe, Dupe.
As I click through this whirl, Nothing can stop the Dupe of URL
And you,
you code in Perl
No one can hurt you, oh, no...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
If this bomb went off next to my head, I'd be dead.
The cosmic ray blast was measured at 10,000 trillion trillion trillion watts of power! or almost the power one Pentium 4 needs.
Oh wait.
It's tragic. Laugh.
And all it got were a fist full of Mardi Gras beads for flashing...
The quote at of the bottom of the page:
People don't usually make the same mistake twice -- they make it three times, four time, five times...
Now the question is... Was that 10 trillion trillon trillion watt's of power calculated at 120 volts or 240?
Didn't RTFA, but... why did the scientists wait almost 2 months before telling us about the biggest explosion they have ever witnessed? (Dec 27?)
The Creator of Light, Ben Parterra, has made light go faster than light so that perhaps the amount of possible dupes will make Slashdot editors' heads explode to prevent any further mistakes.
That's definitely enough Jigawatts to power the flux capacitor!
> if it had happened from a distance of 10 light
> years away, we would be talking about mass
> extinction here on earth.
Only if it had hit the side opposite the one we are on.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
We wouldn't be talking about it.
Of /. that is. I mean really.. the past couple of weeks have
been piss poor in regards subject and dupes. Then again,
I guess if you have to worry when the company is gonna go
bellyup you won't be very motivated. Ouch LNUX.
Notice how so many people post comments to a dupe story anyway? Slashdot's goal is to maximize page views and therefore ad revenue. When a dupe story carries 150 comments with it, why should the editors NOT post one or two regularly?
/. editors are no different than trolls, above all they crave attention, and they get that just as easily with dupes as with other stories. So if you don't like dupes, just don't post any comments to them, don't feed the dupers and they will go away eventually.
The
People don't usually make the same mistake twice -- they make it three times, four time, five times...
Quite timely.
Hey, Tom Hanks - stop watching CNN Airport News!
...to screw in a light bulb?
They'll need to screw in a lot with 10,000 trillion, trillion, trillion watts of power at hand!
Worst... cosmic explosion... ever!
Hey The media do the same thing with every disaster. There have been about 12 "Trials of the century" this century.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
or a Time Warp caused by an expolding star?
Sep 27th U.S. time, Sep 26th Indonesian time? Just a thought..
... well, duh. That's what apocalyses do, silly.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
They'd sterilize the earth and there'd be no warning.
Hmmm, let us look at some facts:
12/26/04: Most deadly tsunami in recorded history happens.
12/27/04: Largest ever gamma ray burst happens.
These two major natural events occur with in one day of each other.
Coincidence? Could there be a possible linkage? If so, what could possibly link these two seemingly unrelated events.
Simple - because the same people who talk about these disasters that could almost wipe out earth, are the same people who talk about devising an anti-asteroid protection grid for Earth. They have to spread a little FUD or people would laugh them out of the building.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Tell me about it when I am dead, now THAT would be something, because I expect not to be listening when I am dead.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I dunno if that's how it works - some kind of quota of how many stories get posted per (where is time, or n-submitted, or what). If they're just posting the "good ones" as fast as they come thru the submission queue, then the dup posts confirm some kind of consistency in the submission vetting process. Of course, by now, the posting process should check whether the URLs in the story are the same as ones that have been posted, at least suggesting an appended "this story is a followup", depending on the time/events elapsed. The Slashdot queue editorial process, workflow and criteria would make for very interesting reading.
--
make install -not war
So this happened 50,000 years ago, and it's only now being posted to SlashDot?
Wow
I think it was Arthur C. Clarke who said that supernovas are industrial accidents. That'll teach those aliens to install Windows!
"Ever Detected" by humans, I'm assuming. To claim it's the brighest ever detected period is a bit egocentric.
No wonder the Vulcan's haven't dropped by yet.
We get hit by 10,000 trillion trillion trillion watts of energy, and yet burning fossil fuels are the source of global warming?
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
opening his fridge for a snack.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
I teach a class on literature with apocalyptic themes, so this is close to my heart...
CNN ran a story on magnatars a few weeks ago. Following the trend that you cite of having to endanger the Earth with the unknown at every possible journalistic opportunity, CNN conjectured the devistating consequences of a magnatar passing through our solar system.
The quoted result? "The exotic object would destroy the data on every credit card on the planet."
Tin foil: it's not just for heads any more.
a sterile Earth... imagine the consequences. She'll be hanging out in bars, picking up strange planets... spending her time being pummeled by asteroids. Not a care in the world!
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
Even brighter than the flash of brilliance when Amazon came up with 1-click shopping and then patented it?
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
We could even use this in weather reports: "The weather may be dreary, but if the sun was closer to Earth, we'd all be DEAD!!!!!"
Actually there are a lot of things blowing up in the Universe that I doubt you've ever heard about. This one just happened to get more media attention for one reason or another. If the media publish something like this, they'll want to make it sound interesting for as many people as possible, even when it isn't.
I have a lot of sympathy for the astronomers being quoted. I've had enough experience dealing with journalists to know that it doesn't really matter what you say to them -- they'll often twist it whatever way is most useful to them for the story they want to write.
It looks like the news wire to me. Gaensler (who was quoted) clearly states that there aren't any stars like that within 10 light years, making it obvious that he was really just making a comparison to demonstrate how powerful it was, and that there's no actual danger. It's the journalist who made the decision to include the comment in the story, and at the very least I think it's to his credit that the entire quote was included in what appears to be a reasonable context.... unlike the slashdot summary for this story, which is pointlessly sensationalist by taking the first half of the quote without the last half.
The BBC story (linked from the slashdot dupe) is the worst rendition that I've seen, though. BBC published the quote at the end of the article, but copied the "10 light year" comment to the top in an unclear context, emphasising it and making it appear as if it actually was a danger. As far as I'm concerned, that's just irresponsible reporting. It's trying to make out that there's a potential disaster in the works when there clearly isn't one.
And whoever provides the URL to that page can have all my karma, posthumously of course.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
This is precisely why homo sapiens should be working on the spatial diversification of mother earth's DNA and not fighting petty little wars all over the globe.
.... NOT!!
I'm sure the rest of the universe is going to appreciate the plague of humanity visited upon them
"but is it really necessary to endanger Earth every f-ing time something in the universe blows up?"
Yeah, its just like the wild stories about how just because a couple of buildings in New York get blown up, suddenly all of civilisation is in danger...
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
you've got it round the wrong way. Early morning Dec 26 in SE Asia = Afternoon/Evening Dec 25 in USA .
..alien DoS attack?
It seems that /. could use people who don't even fucking read the blog they're in charge of.
Why is it cool to post the same story 3 times in the same day, but a cook who grabs the crap from yesterday's garbage gets fired?
Most often heard from Slashdot editors wives, girlfriends, boyfriends or inflatable toys:
"This again?"
Seriously, take a moment from inspecting your own balls, and DO YOUR FUCKING JOB. Really.
Or go get fired from McFuckingClownBurger. This site is full of people who do more than you appear to do in the first 5 minutes of their 10 hour day. Is it too much to ask of the editors that they actually read, scan, or glance at the site enough to be called 'editors'?
A gas station toilet has a better story queue than you worthless bitches. Is it really TOO MUCH to READ SUMMARIES OF 12 stories? IS IT? If so, I suggest special ed tutoring. Perhaps you'll learn something from the fucking tards that can at least tell me if they've seen the goddamn puppy in the book before.
Why 'edit' this site at all if you're going to masturbate on donuts all day? Fuck, I can do that, and I don't even have a degree.
You know what really blows my teensy mind? That there was four hours between the time you posted your first story, and the time you posted the dupe from yesterday. What where you doing? Playing Minelayer? Eating samitches? Posting to Fark? Please tell me you do this for free, and that OSDN doesn't pay you to smell your fingers for hours on end.
Yeah, I amy be drunk, but I can still recognize a stupid dupe on the front page of the site I edit. Which is not this one. Which is probably why I'm not working there.
Or smelling my index finger.
Bitches.
The cosmic ray blast was measured at 10,000 trillion trillion trillion watts of power!
That's nothing! I bought some PC speakers from my local PC fly-by-night corner store for $10 and they're rated at 10,000 trillion trillion trillion watts PMPO. Amazing the power these cheap speakers from Taiwan can put out with a 5 Watt power pack.
FOX News probably claimed it as a "close call" and found a way to link it to the War On TERROR(!!), and then blame it on bin Laden and Clinton's lax policy toward astrophysical security.
They are just trying to remind us so that when it happens we aren't so shocked when we loose our atmosphere like most of our neighbors.
eh.
"The exotic object would destroy the data on every credit card on the planet."
My. Gawd.
100 JIGAWATTS??? Somebody hand me the Deloran, we've got work to do!
Is this what I have heard of called as Alpha Reburst? I have seen a pretty detaiiled documentary about it. It's the greatest energy transition phenomenon in cosmos.
Sigged!
dunno if that's how it works - some kind of quota of how many stories get posted per (where is time, or n-submitted, or what). If they're just posting the "good ones" as fast as they come thru the submission queue, then the dup posts confirm some kind of consistency in the submission vetting process
Much of my wisdom comes from movies. They're so graphic and poignant. Let me share something I saw in Kill Bill that may explain dupes:
"How is he ever going to see you again?" - Esteban Vihaio
Of course this doesn't accurately describe the reason. It is striking how broad the topics are of interest to us all. After reading n topics, it's hard to be motivated to look at n + 1. Another thing is the odd lack of immediate relevance to my life most of the topics have due to the sheer number of topics. Also amazing, the sheer number of things of immediate interest that do not appear as topics! It makes Slashdot a bit distracting though still fun.
So what can anyone say about people who will still look at a duplicated story?
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.