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NASA Detects Nearby Mystery Explosion

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the kaboooooom dept.

starexplorer2001 writes "Space.com is reporting that NASA has detected a 'totally new' mystery explosion near our galaxy." From the article: "The event, detected Feb. 18, looks something like a gamma-ray burst (GRB), scientists said. But it is much closer--about 440 million light-years away--than others. And it lasted about 33 minutes. Most GRBs are billions of light-years away and last less than a second or just a few seconds."

2 of 329 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Is this some new meaning of the word 'nearby'? by maxwell+demon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's just about 4400 times the diameter of our galaxy. So imagine the milky way were your house. Of course I don't know the diameter of your house, but let's just assume it's something like 10 meters. Then in relation it would be 44 km away. Ok, I admit, that's not really "nearby" any more ... but then, thinking of it, the center of gravitation of a geek is his computer, so make that about half a meter, so the distance shrinks to 2.2 km ... would you accept that as nearby, or do I have to mention that the really important part of the computer is the CPU anyway? :-)

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  2. Re:I'm confused by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Leci n'est pas un photon.