Slashdot Mirror
Black Hole Birth Detected this Morning
An anonymous reader writes "SPACE.com is reporting on the first optical afterglow ever detected from a short-duration (milliseconds) Gamma-Ray Burst. The GRB signals the birth of a black hole resulting from a merger between two neutron stars. Theory had predicted the whole thing, which was all spotted this morning by NASA's Swift satellite and ground-based observatories, thanks to an automated email system that notifies astronomers worldwide."
Poor wording. It didn't come from inside the event horizon, but probably right outside it, or before an event horizon was created it was emitted.
IANAP; though, I do have a strong intrest in it.
So far these have been the least intelligent responses to scientific matter I believe I have ever see on slashdot. If this were anything related to YRO, linux or windows the people would be busting out certifications & degrees in bunches, but the recorded creation of a blackhole, all we get is poorly constructed sexual innuendo. Fantastic.
that makes makes me glad I'm not an astronomer.
A Gamma-ray burst lasting less than a second from 2.2 billion light years away, followed by an X-ray afterglow (for a few seconds).
Probably a black hole.
Or maybe the civil war on Zebulon III finally escalated to gamma-ray weapons.
But what funding agency would believe that?
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
I wouldn't give the so-called rational scientists too much credit either. They "knew" that the cosmos was perfect and unchanging, in spite of evidence to the contrary. All human beings have prejudices and irrational ideas.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
It has all the earmarks of "We don't understand this sh*t, so we think no one else does, so we think god did it". And the rest of the illiterate rabble thinks the same and says "Well that SOUNDS right, let's be skeptical about the very science that lets us use computers in the first place!"
They "knew" that the cosmos was perfect and unchanging, in spite of evidence to the contrary.
The main difference being, of course, was once the evidence became irrefutable that such notions were incorrect, scientists changed the theories to fit the data. Religions have a tendency to kill people when challenged.
That's the way it's supposed to work. "They" didn't ALL believe that obviously, and when there was enough evidence to the contrary the theory was updated.
Scientists can be just as guilty as anyone of holding onto their beliefs, the difference is they can't say "God told me so" and justify killing the nonbelievers.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
So far these have been the least intelligent responses to scientific matter I believe I have ever see on slashdot.
:-) But then, it's Slashdot, and it does have its moments.
Yeah, kind of dire.
Here's a slightly scientific thought for you though (but only slightly). What's the extinction radius of a 10,000 trillion trillion trillion watt event like this one?
Because if the extinction radius is at all large, and if this happens at all frequently on a cosmological timescale, then it ought to be factored into Drake's equation.
It could be the reason why the galaxy doesn't appear to be crammed full of high-tech intelligent life --- maybe random sectors of the galaxy everywhere get sterilized back to lifelessness by magnetar events often enough to keep the average density of life in the galaxy near zero, because life simply can't persist very long?
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Amen brutha--I was hoping that there would be discussion about this, but I'm sad to see it so low down the page. Apparently we're all comedians on Slashdot today (no, I'm not new here).
Hopefully the physicists haven't been completely driven away yet. A gravity wave detection coincident with the gamma ray burst and visible light aftermath would be a great event for these folks.
The white zone is for loading and unloading only. If you need to load or unload go to the white zone. It's a way of life
Inverse square... Yeah, so what? You fail to realise just how much energy a supernova releases... If one goes bang 5000 light years away, you'll be able to see it burning bright even during the day. But within a thousand lightyears... We really would never know what hit us...
Not just identify and detect, but predict. This is just another nail in the coffin of Intelligent Design "theory" and similar nonscientific drivel. This whole science business we modern humans have been working on, and all the theories that are widely accepted today, are all interconnected, with layers upon layers of interdependency, which provides a sort of check-and-balance on the whole mess. One cannot accept that modern scientific theory predicted this black-hole event, which observers around the world could see and record with (technologically augmented) senses, while completely denying the validity of interdependent theories like electromagentism, gravity, relativity, quantum physics, etc. It's important to make this clear to those who would pick and choose which theories they happen to like or which support their own offbeat schemes for how the world works. It's all connected, and you can either take it all (with a grain of salt and a good measure of critical rationalism, of course, because nothing is beyond all doubt and one should always be open to new evidence that contradicts an accepted theory) or chuck it all and go read your horoscope.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Where do you think the word "Protestant" came from?
And how many people died as a direct result of the Protestant reformation? Compare, please, to the number of people who died as a part of the revolution in physics at the advent of quantum mechanics and general relativity.