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

Too long of a time delay?

[cyberbob2351]

With explosions that size, wouldn't 203 seconds of lagtime before observation be a huge killer of the results?

Furthermore, is there any possibility of a dipole radiation distribution for the fraction of linear polarization? Perhaps for this particular sample, we caught the glimpse of a stellar pole? Wouldn't we need a larger sample size to make a more conclusive prediction if this was the case?

Re:...is anyone else reminded of TNG?

[inviolet]

Yes. Also extremely stupid unless you can deliver it from more than "half a galaxy" away :P.

GRBs are thought to emanate only from the poles of a supernova. So no, a GRB can indeed be 'aimed'.

I've often wondered if GRBs aren't simply the result of some technological civilization stumbling onto a new law of physics, and wiping themselves out in the process. It would certainly explain the absence of any voices in a galaxy that -- by now -- ought to be teeming with life.

Re:Actually, I see a correlation with black-holes.

[FooAtWFU]

When a black hole forms, the matter trapped within the event horizon has (for all intents and purposes) left our universe.

No, I don't think so. The matter is still there warping space with its gravity. The inability to get it back out is an entropy problem, not a conservation-of-mass-and-energy problem.

The intense bursts of radiation observed from the vicinity of black holes (especially those forming as a result of supernovae) are generally the result of some pretty extreme interactions just before the matter enters the black hole, as this matter is subject to extreme heating and compression and such - enough, even, to perform fusion on some pretty tough stuff and get metals as heavy as uranium.