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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."
The Gamma ray burst was determined to emitted from a very large cigarette lighter igniting a very, very large cigarette. SETI recorded the first successfully detected extraterrestrial broadcast of a message, which they believe was "Was it good for you, too?" Bachelor and bachelorette scientists around the world are extremely puzzeled and have few clues as to what it all means.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Wasn't there another slashdot article a few weeks ago about how blackholes don't exist? I think it was talking about this report.
It happened 2.2 billion years ago. Slashdot really needs to try and stay current.
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fish and he'll wipe out the species.
The burst has been named GRB050509b
I mean, really! How droll, how clever...
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
Found it. Donald Coyne of UCSC gave a talk on the Ultimate Fate of Small Black Holes. Be sure to check the Milagro link on his facutly page.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
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!"
Red Dwarf, Season 3, Episode 2 "Marooned."
Dating yourself, eh?
This is slashdot. It's not like anyone else will date us.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
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