Slashdot Mirror
Space Telescope Catches Monster Flare
gollum123 writes, "NASA's Swift satellite has seen a giant flare explode from a nearby star. Our sun also flares when twisted magnetic field lines in the solar atmosphere suddenly snap — but this was on a far larger scale, perhaps 100 million times as strong. The energy released by the explosion on II Pegasi was equivalent to about 50 quintillion atomic bombs. If the Sun were ever to produce such an outburst, it would almost certainly cause a mass extinction on Earth. II Pegasi is a binary system 135 light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. Its two stars are close, only a few stellar radii apart; as a result, tidal forces cause both stars to spin quickly, rotating in lockstep once in seven days compared to the Sun's 28-day rotation period. Fast rotation is thought to be conducive to strong stellar flares."
It's Election Day, so I get into work early, before lunch even. The phone rings. Shit!
I turn the page on the excuse sheet. "COSMIC SOLAR FLARES" stares out at me. I'd better read up on that. Two minutes later
I'm ready to answer the phone.
"Hello?" I say.
The Voting machines are messed up, We can't vote!!!
"Ah, yes. Well, there's been some cosmic solar activity this morning, it always disrupts electronics..." I say, sweet as a sugar pie.
"Huh? But I my friends could vote in Itasca County"
"Yes, that's entirely possible, cosmic solar activity is very unpredictable in it's effects. Why just a few years ago, we had some votes just dissappear from a guys total during the middle of a recount!"
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
How long until this story is tagged "itsatrap?"
50 quintillion atomic bombs? The pegasiuns have nukular weapons! Quickly, draw up sanctions/ignore/invade
I'mn scratching that system off of my list of possible destinations if we manage to run our current ecosystem into the ground and need to send refugees off to a replacement.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
What if we all ran inside real quick?
Dark Reflection
We likes pictures? Got any?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The energy released by the explosion on II Pegasi was equivalent to about 50 quintillion atomic bombs. If the Sun were ever to produce such an outburst, it would almost certainly cause a mass extinction on Earth.
My fellow Americans, our only option is clear: We need to preemptively invade the sun.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Isn't it nice that our tax dollars go to these awesome telescopes yet they can't show us a freaking picture.
He arranged it to distract voters, and to also at the same time energize the "Keep us safe from space aliens" vote.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Massive star and flares
"The energy released by the explosion on II Pegasi was equivalent to about 50 quintillion atomic bombs. If the Sun were ever to produce such an outburst, it would almost certainly cause a mass extinction on Earth."
This is just my unqualified, layman's opinion, but I agree.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Now we can have global BBQ with extra-crispy fries to go!
(BTW, There are no escape exits. Have a nice day!)
"My fellow Americans, our only option is clear: We need to preemptively invade the sun."
Preemptive? It's just striking back, is all. How much longer do we have to go on with them bombarding us with deadly radiation and killing us??!?!
Where were you when the voynix came?
Most stars appear like point sources even for the most powerful telescopes. In this case "see" probably means they have a graph of intensity over time.
She just wasn't happy with parting the Red Sea.
I'm sure it was news last year, though!
I have just acquired a beam which will induce a "GIANT FLARE" inside the sun, which will in turn result in a mass extinction...
that is, unless, the world governments agree to give me...
50 QUINTILLION DOLLARS
Mmwwaa haaaa, mwaa haa haa, mwa haa haaaa!
We're...we're gonna need more tucks medicated pads...
Karma: Excer..ex...excellahhh...realll good (mostly affected by drinking not done in moderation)
Before Explosion:
O o
After Explosion:
O o===
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Someone forget to put SG-Atlantis on the notification list?
This is a 135 year old story!
What they're not telling you is that many scientists suspect that extremely large flares are indeed possible from our Sun, but not likely. Translation- it could happen tomorrow, so make your peace.
This happened over a hundred years ago..
The sun rotates every 28 days? And the moon is on a 28 day cycle? And women too? Weird.
Here is the NASA link to this item:n ster_flare.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/bursts/mo
I really wish slashdot would just link the real news item instead of the crappy ones it always seems to find. There wasn't even an image on the one they linked.
50 quintillion atomic bombs
OK, so that's a lot, but are we talking 50 quintillion North Korean bombs, or 50 quintillion Really Big Cold War Nation-State Smashers? The point is, analogies like that certainly convey the notion of "A Whole Lot Of Energy," but are really not very meaningful. Not like Libraries of Congress or end-to-end hanging chads that you can really get your head around.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
From the article...
When did an atomic bomb become a unit of energy? Wouldn't it be more meaningful to give the output in calories (10^33) or electon volts (10^62) or hamburgers (10^27)?
But of course solar activity doesn't affect global warming or anything, right?
Heres some pics of solar flares.
None are the one FTA, but it probably looks like these, only shaped like some sort of a monster.
1 voice in a sea of voices
BTW if a quintillion is 10^18, it's not that much. Our Sun puts out every second about 10^11 equivalent megatons of energy 50 x 10^18 is only 50 (US) billion times as much.
Now about those TPS reports...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I'm surprised it took this long for a Star Gate: Atlantis comment to pop-up. I read "Pegasus" and "explosion" and *IMMEDIATELY* thought of Atlantis. Must have been Dr. MacKay blowing up half a solar system again.
What would a star do if a planet sized object ran into it?
would contain at least one picture. Heck, even an illustration would do.
Repant. Thy end is sheer.
We regret to inform you Mr. President that the invasion plans will have to be put on hold as we are experiencing extreme development problems with the fleet of coal powered inter planetary invasion shuttles Defense Secretary Rumsfeld insisted we develop to carry the invasion force. We would furthermore like to reiterate our previous advice that persuade Mr. Rumsfeld to consider the use of a more conventional power source.
Respectfully
NASA
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
"If the Sun were ever to produce such an outburst, it would almost certainly cause a mass extinction on Earth."
This sounds like a great premise for a hollywood sci-fi epic.
For those of you that like music that teaches science, here's on about the Swift satellite (the satellite that detected the flare discussed in the article). You can listen to the lyrics here and the lyrics are posted here. AstroCappella is the group that recorded this; they have several rather interesting songs available.
Do they mean -
1. It would have caused mass extinction for sure
or
2. It would have caused mass extinction, if the solar flare was pointing to the earth ?
My point being, the flare is directional. If it was not pointing to earth and still could have caused extinction, then it could mean that a much less powerful flare can cause extinction in earth, if it is pointing straight to earth.
I was unable to understand from the article, i.e. why the question.
Leela: You know how much an [military base] that big would cost on the Sun?
I read that as Space Telescope Monster Catches Fire. Too early in the morning for that kinda headline.
Come to Australia so we can strip search you and rob you of your internets, pr0n, rights and freedoms.
STAN
We need to talk. Do you know what this is about?
JOANNA
My, uh, flair.
STAN
Yeah. Or, uh, your lack thereof. I'm counting and I only see fifteen pieces. Let me ask you a question, Joanna.
JOANNA
Umm-hmm.
STAN
What do you think of a person who only does the bare minimum?
JOANNA
Huh. What do I think? Let me tell you what I think, Stan. If you want me to wear thirty-seven pieces of flair like your pretty boy Brian over there, then why don't you just make the minimum thirty-seven pieces of flair?
STAN
Well, I thought I remember you saying you wanted to express yourself.
JOANNA
Yeah. Yeah. Y'know what? I do. I do want to express myself. Ok? And I don't need thirty-seven pieces of flair to do it. (gives him the finger) All right? There's my flair! And this is me expressing myself. (holds up her hand) There it is! I hate this job! I hate this goddamn job and I don't need it!!
09:F9:11:02 - 9D:74:E3:5B - D8:41:56:C5 - 63:56:88:C0
...imagine a beowolf cluster of these!
Practically everything you see in the sky is nuclear fallout.
Come to think of it, the same is true during daytime.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Swift does have an optical telescope that can detect light in the blue and ultraviolet bands. The reason that there is no pretty picture is that II Peg a star, and thus appears as a point source in the optical images. All that a picture would show is a small brightening in the point source. Not very interesting to look at.
Informative? I hope to god I find that guy in meta. Meta-moderation needs a "nominate for public humiliation" button.
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
Little Boy, the first atomic bomb (dropped on Hiroshima), was about 15 kilotons. Using that, one would get 3.75e19 kilograms of matter, or about 1/2000th of our moon.
On the other hand, if you use a 10 megaton device as an example, you get 2.5e21 kilograms of matter. That's roughly 1/30th of our moon.
Now, if you use a 1 gigaton device, instead, you'd get 2.5e23, which would be 3.4 moons worth of matter.
Finally, of course, you could just go with "BOOM!"
You are right; Swift does detect in the optical bands as well. (list of instruments on Swift) I guess it would have been better stated if I had said that Swift is not designed to use optical for finding these types of events. Gamma and x-ray tell us more about flares at this distance than visual data does. I suppose any of these frequencies could be overlayed in an x-y coordinate system to show intensity increases in a physical region, but as you pointed out, at this distance that would not be very interesting to look at. More information would be gained by looking at peaks on frequency graphs.
If the sun starts spinning about 4 times faster, it may provoke a solar flare that will kill us all?
Won't anything that gets the sun spinning like a top, oh... KILL US FIRST?
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Umm atomic bombs? uhhh ok? Thats about as useless as saying, "a million bazillion atomic bannanas". We need to know the power not the quantity. Are we talking Ktons? Mtons? Gigatons? what? a million trillion North korea bombs is not impressive. That many in the massive 100+ megaton soviet nukes would be.
I for one welcome our new ionic overloards.
You had me at 'monster'. That would have been interesting. Solar flares, meh, not so much.
Wow, I feel trillions of space particles bombarding my genes. Do you feel that?
My god. How long will we have to wait to see how Major Shepard caused this on SG:Atlantis? This has got to be the best thing for the conspiracy theorists in weeks...
That's not a solar flare, it was a black monolith using zero-point energy to smite one of it's failed experiments on creating intelligence.
Do not look at gigantic stellar flare with remaining eye.
If for whatever reason it has been removed see here. I wonder how long that's been up?
Just two posts above this is a link to the same link, which happens to NOT be of the flare. I Sell the blood of a copycat...
I'm sick and tired of these astronomy stories that don't show a picture of the phenomena in question. What gives?
-- QED
Here: .
Are you happy?
What, you want before and after? Fine, here.
Before:
After: .
You did notice this is over a hundred light years away right?
You want a nice, pretty, picture from 135 light years away?
May I remind you of the very best photo we have of Pluto:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pluto.jpg
No sig today...
So maybe this is what happend to the dino's, no meteor or anything, just a very big solar-flare..! This would explain why some died in very large numbers suddenly (initial exposure) and others dying a little more slowly (couple of days/weeks/months) because of the radiation.
My blog: http://www.redcode.nl
i had no mod points, but wanted you to see a kudos...
It is here!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Maybe I don't understand it correctly, but in the post title you stand 1 megaton = 50 grams of matter and later on the post 10 megaton = 2.5e21 kilograms of matter. I haven't checked the math but my guess is that the first stand (the title one) is closer to E = mc^2 formula
I see your point. BUT, they did brag about "seeing" it, didn't they? Couldn't they have at least drawn up a diagram? Plus, they also bragged about "seeing" it with their new super-telescope. Wouldn't they want to share what they saw?
I guess I was just disappointed as I was ready to see a cool picture based on the article description.
Repant. Thy end is sheer.
when twisted magnetic field lines in the solar atmosphere suddenly snap
What next? Met office guy: - "Damn, I just broke an isobar!"
Less hyperbole and more science, please.
Sounds like someone from StarDestroyer.net arguing why Boba Fett's ship R2 and C-3PO's escape pod could whip the ass of the Enterprise E. Except for not ending it with ", fool!"
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
What is the dividing line between a large flare explosion and small nova explosion?
You messed up your conversion a little bit. You took an energy unit (15 kilotons [of TNT]) and treated it as a mass for E=mc^2, when you should have first calculated the energy that 15 kilotons of TNT releases and divided it by c^2 to get the true mass out of it.
Of course, your last statement still stands.
Off-topic? C'mon, it's funny.
In one episode Dr. McKay blew away a solar system while experimenting with a new energy source.
Spin huge masses around each other at high speed, then marvel at the fact that shit gets flung off regularly. I think if this is news, Astronomers are dumber than I thought they were. What exactly are they hoping to learn from this that they couldn't simulate in a standard centrifuge?
+++OK ATH
He didn't say that 10 megatons = 2.5e21 kg of matter. He said that 50 quintillion bombs, each of 10 megatons, would be 2.5e21 kg of matter. (Didn't you read the summary?)
If you look in your own subject line (formed from his), you see that he *did* do it correctly. 1 megaton of TNT is equivalent to approximately 50 grams of matter converted to energy. Take 50 quintillion bombs, and you get his numbers.
(Can we moderate someone "-1 Disinformative"?)