Echoes from Ancient Supernovae Found?

Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are claiming that they may have found echoes left over from ancient supernovae. From the article: "Just as a sound echo can occur when sound waves bounce off a distant surface and reflect back toward the listener, a light echo can be seen when light waves traveling through space are reflected back toward the viewer. The light echoes were discovered by comparing images of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) taken years apart. By precisely subtracting the common elements in each image and analyzing what variable objects remain, the team looked for evidence of dark matter that might distort the light of stars in a transitory way, as part of a second-generation sky survey called SuperMACHO. SuperMACHO builds on the discoveries of the MACHO project, which started at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1989."

Comments

"SuperMACHO"

[CosmeticLobotamy]

It should be illegal to name your own project, especially with acronyms. Everything should be called "the thing we're doing" until someone unrelated comes along and names it. It would save so many horrible fake acronyms.

Re:Bonus Points!

[Khuffie]

Hmm. I also thought it was weird, but according to google, both are correct.

http://www.google.com/search?q=define:Supernovae
http://www.google.com/search?q=define:Supernova

Fascinating

[Cally]

Well, this sounds really fascinating. I'm afraid I don't have much to add to that, so - on a slightly-related tangent - (the Magellanic Clouds) - the Opportunity Mars rover recently took pictures of the Martian sky at night that shows the Magellanic clouds. Check out the amateur image processing at Unmanned Spaceflight. There have been some amazing pics from the rovers, but this one stands out for me for emotional impact. (Mind you, I'm a sucker for schmaltz and sentiment... Boing Boing linked to a public domain radio version of "It's a Wonderful Life" the other day, I had to keep pausing it stop from bawling like a 5 year old :)