Slashdot Mirror
'Starquake' Cracks Star
geekroot's dad writes "Space.com is reporting that a huge 'starquake' releasing as much energy as our sun does in 250,000 years, has cracked a nearby neutron star. The magnetar produced the brightest explosion ever seen by man outside of the milky way. Although it is 50,000 light-years away, the blast was so huge it temporarily blinded some satellites and briefly altered Earth's upper atmosphere!"
When gamma ray detectors were first put on satellites (to detect nuclear bombs being detonated on Earth) huge gamma ray bursts were found coming from around the universe. I don't think we have ever explained what causes them but they are even more energetic than supernova. Would this even be a possible candiate for the cause of such bursts? Or is it not energetic enough? The current popular explaination is these bursts are black holes being born. Can any astronomers here to explain this to a humble programmer?
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Searching Google for phrases from that post didn't turn up ANY hits, so it doesn't seem to be a cut-and-paste troll.
Subject: Cracks me up (31 August 2005)
"Of course they're baffled. They won't let anybody competent explain it to them. These guys never studied plasma fluid dynamics in school, and they figure that now they're too old to learn it."
Subject: Re:Galaxies must be a lot more dynamic than I thou (3 September 2005)
"The reason they insist it has to be something spinning is that they have studied almost no plasma fluid dynamics, so they can't understand something blasting out radio, light, and x-rays that doesn't have a star in the middle of it."
etc etc
He's not a cut and paste troll, but he's posted enough similar things in the past that I thought the same thing as the GP when I read this one.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman