Robotic Telescope Unravels Cosmic Blast Mystery

An anonymous reader writes "The Register is reporting that scientists from Liverpool John Moores University have used their robotic telescope in the Canary Islands to measure the polarization of light from a Gamma Ray Burst just 203 seconds after its detection by NASA's Swift Gamma Ray Observatory Satellite. The result suggests that the emitting material flowing out from the explosion may not be highly magnetized in the way that some theories had predicted."

Comments

...is anyone else reminded of TNG?

[jamieswith]

By these kinds of events?

The episode where the Q were having their little civil war? massive explosions happening in space... of course they were not GRBs, but it does strike a similar tone somewhere inside me...

These things almost seem like the WMD of the future, the ability to wipe out all life within almost half a galaxy with a single explosion due to the concentration of gamma rays... kindof makes any nuke look insignificant...

Oh no, I just mentioned a weapons application... so if we suddenly see lots of funding of this research by the bush administration... we know why!

Re:Big Bang?

[imsabbel]

Rest assured, not in your case.
You wouldnt find something that leads to real since if you were a tour guide at MIT.