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.
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
Do Slashdot editors even read Slashdot?
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
My tinfoil hat is taking a real beating from all these cosmic rays!
See also from Friday - right here.
R(k)
'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.
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!
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.
Dupe of URL, surely?
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.
With over 50 redundant "dupe" responses on slashdot, you'd think this story is becoming a DUPER-NOVA!
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.
"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!
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.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
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
This comment is a dupe of the past ten in this thread.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
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..."
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.
I have already thought of creating an alternative to /. where not only comments but also story submissions get modded by the users. Current practice appears to be less than suboptimal.
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.