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

Re:Too long of a time delay?

[markov_chain]

Furthermore, is there any possibility of a dipole radiation distribution for the fraction of linear polarization?

I think you're on to something here. Whoever created that thing could have screwed up any number of things:

- Incorrect dipole length, creating a bad radiation pattern
- Bad impedance match
- Incorrect balun use-- it is not needed unless the feed is unbalanced
- Forgot to factor in dielectric constants, although this is in vacuum so should be safe here

I would measure the VSWR and go from there.

Re:Too long of a time delay?

[Gazzonyx]

I'm not sure that I get why parent's post is funny... Did I miss something?