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

When Anomalous Becomes the Norm

[pln2bz]

It shouldn't surprise us that GRB's don't behave as we thought. Nearly everything we think we know about them is based upon assumptions and speculation that are only minimally supported by evidence. There is potential for error at every single step of this process. To continue to be surprised that our telescopes are returning anomalous data when that's what's been happening nearly every single day for years and years and years is silly. At some point, you have to go back to your assumptions and figure out where you went wrong.

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: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:...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.

Which is the whole point of doing the research.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

It shouldn't surprise us that GRB's don't behave as we thought. Nearly everything we think we know about them is based upon assumptions and speculation that are only minimally supported by evidence. There is potential for error at every single step of this process.

In fact the whole idea is to sometimes find out surprising things that find flaws in the old models and give information to drive the creation of more accurate models. (One definition of information transfer is how much the receiver is surprised. B-) )

That's what we're spending all this money for: To come up with physics that more closely matches the real universe. To do this we have to know what's NOT matching in the old models.

(For those - ideally few of the slashdot participants - who gripe that it's being spent at all: At some point the improved models will almost certainly produce some new and useful technologies and/or end squandering of resources on the pursuit of dead-ends. Of course you can't know up front WHAT technologies it will affect. That's part of what you're finding out.;)