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Astronomers Awaiting 1a Supernova
Aryabhata writes to tell us BBC News is reporting that astronomers have sighted a star on the brink of a "1a" supernova. This opportunity presents the first chance astronomers have ever had to view a supernova of this magnitude up close. From the article: "They are so rare that the last one known in our galaxy was seen in 1572 by the great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who first coined the term nova, for "new star", not realizing he was in fact witnessing the violent end of an unknown star. It has long been believed that type 1a supernovae are the death throes of a white dwarf star. But all modern ones have been so distant that it has not been possible to see what had been there beforehand."
I'll be shocked if this happens during my lifetime. And I doubt it'll happen by the end of my grandkids' lifetimes.
(And they're not even born yet.)
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It happened long ago and the light is just now reaching us.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
This seems interesting only in the way that a man shouting about the end of the world downtown is. The timeframe involved isn't really anything to get excited about...
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
Any decade now.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
From TFA:
But soon, RS Oph could pass the tipping point - the nuclear flame will detonate from deep inside the star and blow it apart. How soon is not clear.
"It could be tomorrow, but most likely it'll be 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 years from now," says Jeno Sokoloski.
Wow that's some long life astronomers. I wonder if they will be around to see DNF getting release.
Stupid headline.
Yeah baby, now there's some snuff on a galactic scale!
fucktard is a tenderhearted description
version 1a? They aren't even in beta yet!
Monstar L
Rho Casspioiae is supposedly near the brink of explosion, too, and aside from that, I remember hearing about some luminous supergiant or hypergiant expected to explode in the same constellation, Casspioia.
Coincidentally, two other supernovas have ocurred in that area, one of which was the one Tycho Brahe saw. Keep an eye on the hypergiants (see: Wikipedia's explanation of how stars are classified)
According to the CNN story, material from a nearby red giant star accumulates around the companion white drawf star until it blows up every 20 years or so. The last explosion was in 1985. The BBC made it sound like a rare opportunity.
In other words, this is the cosmic version of eating beans and lighting farts.
Free microwave popcorn for everybody! (-no sense in dying hungry, I always say-)
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
I took Computer Science as a Humanities subject in college. My girlfriend took it through science. The CS courses feature the same modules, but she was able to take Astrophysics, while I took English. We both consider outselves to have a scientific leaning, though I wouldn't consider myself a "scientist" and she would.
/. blurb and was bouncing (literally!) with excitement, saying "they are reporting it now, so most likely it will be in ten, twenty years - within reasonable research time". I read it and my initial thought was that these reports are being made by science types. That means that this supernova will most likely occur in about 10,000 years, but that some scientist, in a lab somewhere, has just had the bright idea of pushing his research into the media spotlight, where it should (he hopes) be interesting enough to secure him a few more years worth of funding.
...astronomers will be studying the star closely, to watch its every step towards destruction, and hoping to understand the full details of one of the heaven's great mysteries". *sigh*
She read the
From the article: "How soon is not clear [but]
My girlfriend's lack of cynicism aside, this is one of my major problems with the science community. So much is driven by a desperate need to secure funding, that science "news", most of the time, is either hypothetical, theoretical, or so far in the future that it makes no difference to the present. In these cases, when a person finds out that no actual advance has been made, he feels both disappointed and betrayed.
I am fed up with reading...
"Newsflash: No physical reason humans cant live to be 300, once the technology arrives!" *
or
"Newsflash: the universe *might* be made up of string!" *
or
"Newsflash: in 100 billion years, this star will explode!" *
etc, when the invisible postscript to every story is:
* Now that I have your attention, please give me some more funding!
Isn't that the guy from penny arcade ?
*yeah, I know
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
We get to witness a supernova up close? This could be a problem.
"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." -- the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Not only are the distances vast, the times are vast too. Stars live for billions of years. One year in the lifespan of a human is roughly comparable to perhaps 70 million years in the lifespan of a star.
So when someone says "soon" in reference to a prediction of when some stellar event is going to occur, it's likely you'll have to scale up the term by roughly the same amount. "Soon" to a human generally means within/around a day or so, so scaled up to stellar times, that would be within/around 200,000 years.
I expect that by the time this supernova happens, humans will either be unbelievably technologically advanced, or they'll be extinct.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
I've never seen a star go supernova before. But if it's anything like my old Chevy Nova, it'll light up the night sky!
Help us build a better map!
Shit.
On the timescales they're discussing the 1572 sighting was "last year"!
Not to rain on anybodies parade, but if that supernova sends a gamma ray burst in our direction. We can kiss our asses goodby....
Have a nice Sunday!
The question is, can we get there fast enough at Warp 6 to observe it up close?
"May the best sentience win."
(Psst: obscure nerdy reference.)
Please help metamoderate.
"It could be tomorrow, but most likely it'll be 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 years from now," says Jeno Sokoloski.
I'll never complain about lag on IRC again!
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
"They are so rare that the last one known in our galaxy was seen in 1572 by the great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe"
from what i heard, Gabe was pretty pissed about not being invited to it. Apparently he also looked at his neighbor with a telescope ans stole a haribrush she thre out as well.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
From TFW:
It is expected that its mass will continue to increase to beyond this limit; at which point a type Ia supernova will occur and destroy the star system in a spectacular explosion that will be visible from the Earth for several days, even after sunrise. The exact time period of this explosion is not known, but will likely occur within the next 100,000 years.
Whoa.
'If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.'
is this the discovery channel version of slashdot where pointing out the obvious is seen as informative? Come on, this isn't an eigth grade earth and space science class.
IANAA (I am not an astronomer), but let me guess. When you have a binary system you can guess the masses of the stars from the orbital period, and you also have an estimate of the distance between them. If the larger star is spilling material on the smaller one it's because it's exceeding its Roche radius, so you also have an estimate of its size. Is that it, or not even close?
I'm curious. At what range would a Type 1a supernova be lethal to life on Earth?
As far as the size of the galaxy is concerned, 1,950 light-years is essentially in our back-yard. Keeping with scale, are we talking about a firecracker or a stick of dynamite?
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We've had supernovas recorded throughout human history; Wikipedia lists ones occuring in our galaxy (meaning, close enough to be easily observable) in 1006, 1054, 1181, 1572, 1604, and I remember from other sources that several were observed during Roman times. It seems that we've been "unlucky" in that ever since we've started to have precision astronomical instruments, we haven't had one go off in our galaxy. It would be really interesting if we would finally get one in modern times - and since they seem to go off about every 200 years or so, it doesn't seem that unlikely we might get one in our lifetimes. So here's to a little optimism!
The article says that the last supernova was discovered by Tycho Brahe from Penny Arcade. Hawesome!
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
Not to rain on anybodies parade, but if that supernova sends a gamma ray burst in our direction. We can kiss our asses goodby....
It won't make gasoline more expensive, will it?
Although I'm sure technology will have advanced by then to let me use gamma rays to run my Hummer.
According to the link I provided above, a Type 1a supernova would have a gamma ray flux equivalent to 1000 solar flares at 1000 parsecs (10 is the max on any given day!). My recollection of how inverse square works is fuzzy, but I think at our distance we get 1000/(1950/3300)^2 or a flux greater than 2850 solar flares. I dunno, sounds bad.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
...if that supernova sends a gamma ray burst in our direction, we can kiss our asses goodbye...
Which begs the all-important question: Has the correlation between Type 1a Supernova and Gamma Ray Bursts been confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt?
The way I understand the theory, which is not yet engraved in stone, if either of this star's magnetic poles are pointing towards Earth, we're gonna get zapped. However, if we're facing the star's equator, or anywhere but the poles for that matter, we're home free.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
While this supernova could affect the earth, the affect would probably not be catastrophic. We would probably have a great light show and some communication interference, but our existence would not be threatened.
Until the triffids took over.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
I believe the danger depends on where the star is "aimed". Magnetic fields focus the energy at the poles so that much of the energy is directed in narrow beams of radiation. If the star is fairly near and the "pole beam" is aimed at Earth, we may be fried. Some describe it as Cosmic Russian Roulette.
Table-ized A.I.
+4 Informative?!?
Brought to you by the letters "/" and ".".
Heh. Unfortunately, what they teach seems to settle into most layman brains on Slashdot as some sort of structure of weirdness of how light behaves on top an absolute rigid, non relativistic time+3-space. Call it the ether, "rest" space, whatever, it's lodged pretty hard in those brains.
Even laymen who think that they "get" relativity seem to absolutely insist upon believing in an absolute time reference against which simultaneity can be measured, no matter what the equations tell them. "Oh, that's just causation," they say, unconsciously insisting upon their intuitional belief in an absolute clock. "That happened 5000 years ago in the rest frame" is the implicit assumption even though we know that there's no such thing.
Big deal. Simultaneity through space-time isn't reflexive (thanks to the "minus" sign in ), that doesn't mean that there's some absolute reference frame against which you can say something happened, say, 5000 years ago. In fact: there isn't.
NO. You're assuming that your preferred reference frame is more "real" than other reference frames. IN YOUR REFERENCE FRAME it blew up 4 minutes ago. THAT REFERENCE FRAME IS ARBITRARY.
Imagine a non-accelerating observer moving just under the speed of light in our reference frame, moving past the sun, towards us. As far as he's concerned, he's not moving. Light leaves the sun. One second later, in his reference frame, the light gets to us.
THERE IS NO CORRECT REFERENCE FRAME: his measurement is as valid as yours. It is just as correct to say the light left the sun 1 second ago as it is to say that it left 8 minutes ago.
Space-time is weird stuff - don't try to tack your own intuitive absolute non-relativistic rigid space-time under it, you can't do it. This isn't "just light" behaving that way, it's the way that space-time is structured. Your intuition isn't up to the job, no matter how much you wish otherwise.
God, I hate it when people who don't understand relativity pretenf to, and then try to explain it wrongly, as though it were just about things getting weird when you go fast and causality having a speed limit. Space-time is weirder than that.
Could this be a source of gravitational waves strong enough to be detected on earth?
So basically, a star that MIGHT be reaching the THEORETICAL size limit of a white dwarf that actually may have gone Nova over a THOUSAND YEARS AGO, MIGHT, MAYBE, IF WE'RE LUCKY, be visiable from earth sometime between TOMORROW AND ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS FROM NOW.
Wow. What incredible science. Did NewScientist buy the BBC over the weekend?
How many light years away is the suspect star? The article did not say. There's a good chance it already happened!
I like how a "brink" could be 1000, 10000, or 100,000 years as it is gaining about 1 millionth of a solar mass per decade. Let's hope it is 1,10, 100, or even 1000 DAYS. That would really be a "brink"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4885700. stm
so, do we trust Wikipedia or BBC?
the history of the world
They are so rare that the last one known in our galaxy was seen in 1572 by the great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who first coined the term nova, for "new star", not realising he was in fact witnessing the violent end of an unknown star.
My life is forever changed now that I know that Penny Arcade's Tycho Brahe was named after a Danish astronomer by the same name.
The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success. -Elliot Carver
Not too close, I hope.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The beast is 5000 Light Years away. The chances are that this has already happened.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
Apparently, it was a few people who understand special relativity and inertial reference frames better than you do.
"Past light cone" means a lot more than just saying that the light hasn't reached us yet. The need to talk about there being no preferred reference frame is evidenced by all the self-deluded knuckle-draggers here who are saying, "yeah, well, it happened 1950 years ago the light just hasn't reached us yet."
That's not what special relativity says - past and future are not meaningful concepts outside of your past and future light cones, there is only "elsewhere." If your model of the universe includes being able to say something at those distances has happened when it's outside of your past and future light cones, you're working with a newtonian, non-relativistic worldview.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
If the parent is talking about natives of that star system, they're either fled or dead from the big flareup in february. On a related note, Mars is going to be closer in August than any time for thousands of years past /future. Maybe the natives of Mars will flee their dry rocky planet and swarm over here. Welcome Red Men!
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
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