Powerful Blast Confuses Astronomers

eldavojohn writes "Astronomers are still speculating as to what could have caused an abnormally strong five millisecond burst to be detected six years ago when it completely saturated their recording equipment. From the article: 'The burst was so bright that at the time it was first recorded it was dismissed as man-made radio interference. It put out a huge amount of power (10exp33 Joules), equivalent to a large (2000MW) power station running for two billion billion years.'"

Comments

Due diligence

[KingSkippus]

I heard this story on NPR yesterday. I'm inclined to believe that it was...

Absolutely nothing.

It happened one time, six years ago, for less than five milliseconds, and no one else in the world can corroborate that it happened. To me, it sounds like either an equipment malfunction or something much more mundane that interfered with the measurement for that split second in time. Science is about repeatable, testable, observable results, not one-off flukes.

Now, having said that, I think it's probably worthwhile to see if it happens again. As the article says, "The astronomers estimate on the basis of their results that hundreds of similar events should occur over the sky each day." If that is the case, then get to looking, and maybe I'll change my mind once they have more evidence.

Until then, though, let's not get so caught up in the coolness of the possibility of something we've never seen before that we don't do due diligence and make good science.

Re:Due diligence

[p0tat03]

I admit I didn't RTFA - but if this was an actual reading, shouldn't it have been recorded by *multiple* sensors that are spaced very far apart? What are the odds that all the sky-facing sensors caught the same misreading at the same time? If it's just a single (or a group of local) sensors, then it's probably nothing.

Re:Due diligence

[History's Coming To]

I'm inclined to agree. A one-off freak occurrence is usually Somebody Else's Fault. Plenty of astronomical events put out this level of energy, but very rarely for such a short length of time.

Re:Due diligence

[Kyrka]

Indeed. Rule number twenty seven: Never trust your instruments as perfect.

Re:Due diligence

[MichaelSmith]

To me, it sounds like either an equipment malfunction or something much more mundane

TFA:

The signal was spread out, with higher frequencies arriving at the telescope before the lower frequencies. This effect, called dispersion, is caused by the signal passing through ionized gas in interstellar and intergalactic space. The amount of this dispersion, the astronomers said, indicates that the signal likely originated about three billion light-years from Earth.

So its not just a burst of noise. It has characteristics which say something about where it came from.

Re:Due diligence

[mysticgoat]

"Do not look in ass end of warp drive engine when it pulses."

Well, that's a very rough translation of part of the instruction manual. It is about as good as I can do with the limited concepts of mathematics and physics presently available on this rock.

This concludes our current injection of alien concepts into the Internet through the Slashdot interface. We now return you to your rockbound networks.

Re:Due diligence

[Racemaniac]

depends on how big the range is where we can see it. it's not because it's a lot of energy, that it has to be seen from all over the planet. it has to originate somewhere, and you'de probably have to be looking very close to there to see it... haven't read the article eiter, but i'd assume that if it's something seen that easily, they wouldn't spend 6 years trying to figure it out

Re:Due diligence

[Korveck]

Problem is that such event only happens every so often. God did not create enough black holes to let you observe one die every other day.

Re:Due diligence

[Anonymous Coward]

The above poster is correct. If you hear a burst of static on the radio, you might just as easily suspect the radio has a loose wire as you would suspect a distant source of interference.

However, if you pick up Beethoven's 5th Symphony, the odds of it being the loose wire making and breaking contact in exactly the right pattern are incredibly low...to the point you'd be insane if your top theory wasn't a distant transmitter broadcasting the symphony.

That's a little extreme of an analogy, but in this case there is also an order to the noise that highly suggests a real signal. Of course, there's orderly forms of interference, too, but most of those can be eliminated by comparing them with the signal.

I don't understand the comment on the rate. If they've only observed one, they can't make any guesses about the rate. The fact that we saw one looking at only a small portion of the sky suggests the rate is reasonably high, but we don't know how much dumb chance was involved.

As for what it is, it sounds like they may have ruled out this idea, but I was wondering if it might actually be a much more distant gamma-ray burst that's been red-shifted all the way to radio wavelengths.

Re:Due diligence

[NeutronCowboy]

I'm inclined to agree. There are very few violent events in Astrophysics that last exactly 5 ms. Even if it's true that the cosmos is vast, and that it is not very likely that someone else was looking at the same exact patch (more like fraction of a pinhead) in the sky at the same exact time, I believe something else should have picked up something. A pure radio radio signal that completely saturates equipment for exactly 5ms? I expect neutrino showers, x-ray waves, visible light - anything, something - to go along with, precede or follow it. Events of that magnitude are messy, and they leave other traces behind.

There are two possibilities here:
- Someone got too excited with their data processing software. Some of that stuff was written in the 70s and is held together with spit, duct tape and undergrad students who have never before seen a Fortran77 program, and probably never will again. I don't trust weird stuff that only shows up after heavy duty data processing.
- Someone picked up a not-so-local radio signal. The atmosphere can do weird things to radio waves.

Or some aliens were messing around with their cell phones again. In any case, I'll file this under "Postprocessing is a bitch".

Re:Due diligence

[NeutronCowboy]

How do you differentiate Beethoven's 5th from noise based on a 5 ms sample? You're dealing with a very, very small sample size that has had multiple data processing passes applied to it.

Re:Due diligence

[bl8n8r]

It was the echo of the Big Bang bouncing back from the North wall of the universe.

Re:Due diligence

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference between capturing a bullet with a 24fps and capturing a bullet with a slow-mo camera is the slow-mo camera costs more to replace.
I, for one, am not made of money, and I'll stick to shooting at 24fps cameras.

Re:Due diligence

[MillionthMonkey]

How do you differentiate Beethoven's 5th from noise based on a 5 ms sample?

If it had been a 9 ms pulse, we'd certainly know which symphony it was.

Re:Due diligence

[Vellmont]

So its not just a burst of noise. It has characteristics which say something about where it came from.

Can you say with certainty that an equipment malfunction, radio frequency interference, or some other terrestrial source of this signal couldn't produce the same characteristic?

You can derive a lot of meaning from a single random number if you look hard enough too.

I'd be more convinced if someone expert in RFI said that this particular signal couldn't have been produced by RFI, couldn't have been been a transistor blowing in the receiver, etc.

Re:Due diligence

[Cassius Corodes]

Well how about breaking with tradition and reading the article for once. :(

I am no astronomer but from the article it looks like the problem was that it was a very short burst (5ms) and you needed to be looking at the right place to see it. I presume that current telescopes don't sample at that low rate so they might have missed it or there were looking at different parts of the sky. Also it was totally Baba Gunusha.

Re:Due diligence

[chrisG23]

How do you differentiate Beethoven's 5th from noise based on a 5 ms sample? You're dealing with a very, very small sample size that has had multiple data processing passes applied to it.

Easy. You don't. You differentiate between 5ms of unordered information, or 5ms of orderdered information that resembles known ordered information likely to unintentionally occur when monitoring with the particular equipment you are using or because of uncontrolable shit in the environment (-noun 1. the aggregate of surrounding things, conditions, or influences; surroundings; milieu.), and something else. In this case the scientists at present believe they found something else, and, as scientists are prone to do, are trying to explain it.

Re:Due diligence

[NeutronCowboy]

Wow. I must have pissed off someone who got mod points recently. This the third straight post that got modded down. Looks like I've ascended to slashdot exalted status - I've got my own nameless stalker! Wee!

Additional benefit of this post: someone will get to waste even more off-topic mod points. :)

Re:Due diligence

[Dak RIT]

Well, I'm not an astronomer, but from the article on physorg.com: "The burst of radio waves was strong by astronomical standards, but lasted less than five milliseconds. The signal was spread out, with higher frequencies arriving at the telescope before the lower frequencies. This effect, called dispersion, is caused by the signal passing through ionized gas in interstellar and intergalactic space. The amount of this dispersion, the astronomers said, indicates that the signal likely originated about three billion light-years from Earth."

To me that suggests that, while the actual event at the location it occurs can be reasonably said to have lasted less than five milliseconds, the actual recording of data lasted longer than that period of time, and there are certain identifiable characteristics in the data that an astronomer would expect to find, both of which seem to strongly suggest that the event really did occur.

Re:Due diligence

[porcupine8]

Also it was totally Baba Gunusha

But even with the eggplant, is hummus really capable of such a high energy output?

Re:Due diligence

[flappinbooger]

Death Star. Luke Skywalker. You know, the movie. Long long ago in a galaxy far far away? 3 billion light years sounds about right!

Re:Due diligence

[MousePotato]

"Tom, I can name that tune in <1 ms..."

Re:Due diligence

[phoenixwade]

Absolutely nothing.

It is so rare that the first comment (that I see, anyway) actually contains something worth reading.

from the article: "Astronomers studying archival data from an Australian radio telescope have discovered a powerful, short-lived burst of radio waves that they say indicates an entirely new type of astronomical phenomenon."

I was wondering how one observation of one very short-lived event, from One set of sensors qualified as indicating anything. But I'm not an astronomer. In any other field it wouldn't be anything more than a "that's interesting, lets look and see if it occurs anywhere else..", I'd think.

Re:Due diligence

[jollyreaper]

Death Star. Luke Skywalker. You know, the movie. Long long ago in a galaxy far far away? 3 billion light years sounds about right! First Death Star or Second Death Star? I need to figure out how many years we have left before the Phantom Menace hits the fan.

Re:Due diligence

[lpq]

"Science is about repeatable, testable, observable results, not one-off flukes."

Yeah! Show me a repeatable supernova or gamma burst. I want to see it at the same point explode again -- or it not real! The science you talk about seems too full of dogma to be indistinguishable from religion.

Re:Due diligence

[so sue mee]

a blast, 6 years ago watch this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUiNiB2yVCQ

Re:Due diligence

[kimvette]

First Death Star or Second Death Star? I need to figure out how many years we have left before the Phantom Menace hits the fan.

It already did, about 32 years before Luke blew up the first Death Star. There should be another burst from another Death Star in five years or so.

Re:Due diligence

[Detritus]

5 milliseconds is a very long time. I often work with radio receiver data that has been sampled at a plodding 40 kHz rate, and many interesting things can happen in much less than 5 ms. That's enough time for a signal to travel 1500 km.

Re:Due diligence

[iron-kurton]

A one-off freak occurrence is usually Somebody Else's Fault

Besides, he left it to an undergrad to analyze the data. Therefore, it's the Undergrad's Fault. :)

Re:Due diligence

[IllForgetMyNickSoonA]

Then again, I'd guess in all these years professional astronomers have been looking into that 5ms event, betting their funds and maybe even their careers on the outcome of the research, they'd have come across the same ideas as you did, and they'd have double-checked the raw data for at least 10 times already.

If not, somebody should suggest them to read /. more frequently.

Re:Due diligence

[nilbog]

The "rate" was the amount of time it took the low frequencies to hit after the high frequencies. So one event took place 6 billion light years away, but the high frequencies traveled slightly faster, giving them a spread of 5 milliseconds. The "rate" isn't talking about the time in between these events. At least thats how I understood it.

Re:Due diligence

[murdocj]

What I'd like to understand, is that if this has been observed once, and they don't know what it is, how can astronomers estimate that hundreds of similar events occur each day???

Re:Due diligence

[Bearhouse]

You're right about repeatability & reproducibility. But note from TFA:

'The signal was spread out, with higher frequencies arriving at the telescope before the lower frequencies. This effect, called dispersion, is caused by the signal passing through ionized gas in interstellar and intergalactic space. The amount of this dispersion, the astronomers said, indicates that the signal likely originated about three billion light-years from Earth.'

Sound too precise to be an equipment malfunction, which hopefull they also checked as possible cause Also:

No previously-detected cosmic radio burst has the same set of characteristics. "This burst represents an entirely new astronomical phenomenon," Bailes said. The astronomers estimate on the basis of their results that hundreds of similar events should occur over the sky each day. "Few radio surveys have the necessary sensitivity to such short-duration bursts, which makes them notoriously difficult to detect with current instruments," added Crawford. The next generation of radio telescopes currently under development should be able to detect many of these bursts across the sky.

So, we'll have to wait...

Re:Due diligence

[budgenator]

It occurred to me that because a black-hole was esentially a region of space-time that had walled itself out from the universe, that any photons inside the event horizon would circulate endlessly, well at least untill the black-hole evaporated enough for the event horizon to puncture, which would release all of the photons that had been accumulating over the eons and would make one hell-of-a-bang!

Re:Due diligence

[osu-neko]

That estimate is based on it being one of the things they think it may be. It's true that they don't know what it is, but that doesn't me they have no idea what it is.

Re:Due diligence

[osu-neko]

I was wondering how one observation of one very short-lived event, from One set of sensors qualified as indicating anything. But I'm not an astronomer. In any other field it wouldn't be anything more than a "that's interesting, lets look and see if it occurs anywhere else..", I'd think.

Yes, and that's exactly what's happening here. One person observed it. Now they've reported it. Others will now look and see if the observation can be repeated. That's how science works.

If you don't want to read about it in progress, just the end results, avoid reading anything but textbooks.

Re:Due diligence

[cytg.net]

Sounds like the classic WMSD (weapon of mass solar destruction) to me .. and the observation is thus obviosly from the jetstream generated by the, in question, singularity just before it popped. What else could it be ?

Re:Due diligence

[niktemadur]

It sounds like either an equipment malfunction or something much more mundane that interfered with the measurement for that split second in time. Science is about repeatable, testable, observable results, not one-off flukes.

I find your argument intriguing, and I immediately respect a healthy dose of skepticism while wielding Occam's Razor. But flipping your argument while focusing on the hypothetical malfunction and/or interference, as well as trying to apply that other great tool, the Sherlock Holmes Principle, it goes something like this:

One incident six years ago, no further similar malfunctions nor interferences either before nor after, in this or any other similar instrument in the world. That would be either quite a malfunction (!) or a not-so-mundane interference. Furthermore, TFA states that at first the team thought it was a man-caused interference, but seem to have discarded the possibility. What I'm trying to say here is that in the context of your argument, this event also seems highly improbable from a technological standpoint.
Further evidence is required to support your argument. Come to think of it, the same applies to any counterargument so far.

In any case, TFA does not tell us about any attempt to repeat any possible technical glitch. In fact, TFA was very unsatisfying and downright misleading, case in point, the ludicrous claim that the 5 millisecond spike in the readings may have been caused by "the last throes of an evaporating black hole". WTF! Nothing, I repeat, nothing with mass beyond the Chandrasekar Limit can evaporate via quantum processes in quintillions of years, let alone 10-13 billion.

Re:Due diligence

[phoenixwade]

If you don't want to read about it in progress, just the end results, avoid reading anything but textbooks.

You missed my point. I DON'T object to reading about this stuff, I object to the way it's written up. I'm very sure that the journalist, rather than the scientists is the source of the "One thing means anything" quote. The astronomic community, I'm sure, is saying "hmmm, interesting... lets look and see if it's something known, something new, or equipment failure......"

Re:Due diligence

[greedyturtle]

..but I can't hum it for you, since it's a copyrighted work.

Uh

[Anonymous Crowhead]

Did it come from Uranus?

Re:Uh

[empaler]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZdaSWP4WNo

The answer:

[JonTurner]

God sneezed.

Re:The answer:

[I Like Pudding]

Him Bless Him.

Re:The answer:

[liquidsin]

would it come off as rude if you told God to "go bless Yourself"?

Re:The answer:

[David Gould]

would it come off as rude if you told God to "go bless Yourself"? Well, how would you feel if He told you to "go be fruitful and multiply yourself"?

Re:The answer:

[Nulagrithom]

I thought it was the black plague? Sneezers probably had it so people said "God bless you" since they were pretty much doomed otherwise. Or maybe that's something I just heard.

So I looked it up in wiki and they say both. Meh.

Re:The answer:

[bhiestand]

That's an old maid's tale. How Stuff Works has a decent article on sneezing. So does Snopes.

wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

6EQUJ5

Re:wow!

[BlueMerle]

I think you mean 7EQUJ5 ;)

Re:wow!

[pintpusher]

Wow! this is so not off-topic. wake up mods. try google.

here, I'll make it easy for you.

http://www.bigear.org/6equj5.htm

Re:wow!

[NorQue]

TBH, he could've written one or two words explaining what he posted. If this post wouldn't take away my modding rigths for this article I would still mod him Off Topic. Without explanation these numbers are just rubbish.

Re:wow!

[murdocj]

Having occasionally read the at -1, I'd have to say thank God for the mod system.

Re:wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

TBH, he could've written one or two words explaining what he posted. If this post wouldn't take away my modding rigths for this article I would still mod him Off Topic. Without explanation these numbers are just rubbish. Sure. Let us always assume the readers are mindnumbingly stupid and will never use Google if they have ever heard of it. Intelligence and curiosity must be banned. Thankfully the mods are working on it. Rah! Rah! Rah!

Re:wow!

[shiftless]

GD38AD

-1 off topic? WTF? stupid mods, look it up on google! .. haha made you look!

Re:wow!

[phoenixwade]

Why?

It's no different from a Spaghetti monster reference, or a south park "1...2..3 Profit" reference... or any of a number of other obscure jokes and references that float around /.

It's a weakness of the mod system that there are so many that end up with Mod points and don't read the guidelines. But the meta modsystem compensates for that some what. It's like the American legal system.... Sure, there are some massive flaws..... But I like it better than the alternatives, because we do plug the holes every now and then.....

Re:wow!

[NorQue]

It's damn interesting, yes. And a smallish around these numbers would've made his post very informative. But it's missing and alone these numbers mean nothing, IMHO. It was the reaction to him being modded down that someone else posted a similar link.

IMHO Inside jokes are expected to be understood by regulars, but at least I can't remember reading about these numbers before here on Slashdot. I remember reading an article about the Wow! signal itself, but there's no way in hell that I would have remembered the numbers without context.

News?

[tringstad]

So, something happened 6 years ago, and nobody knew what it was.

They still don't.

Where's the fucking news?

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, something happened 6 years ago

Incorrect ... something happened three billion and six years ago.

Re:News?

[istartedi]

Well, it was 3 billion light years away. That means it was 3 billion and 6 years ago. This has to some kind of record, even for Slashdot. Come on guys, get with it.

Re:News?

[Vellmont]

So, something happened 6 years ago, and nobody knew what it was.


No, something happened 3 billion years ago. An instrument recorded it six years ago. Someone re-analyzed the data recently, and discovered something they couldn't explain. They published a paper yesterday.

Where's the fucking news?

The "news" is that there's likely something very big going on we don't understand. It's kind of sad that you and others only think it's news once we understand what's going on. Science isn't just the end product you read about in textbooks. It's a process by which we understand the universe. This is part of that process, and if this isn't just radio interference, it's extremely interesting.

Re:News?

[E 99]

It's kind of sad that you and others only think it's news once we understand what's going on. Science isn't just the end product you read about in textbooks. It's a process by which we understand the universe...It's a process by which we understand the universe. This is part of that process, and if this isn't just radio interference, it's extremely interesting.

Okay, it's part of the scientific process. Your underlying assumption seems to be that anything that is science must also be news. How is it news that yesterday scientists, in the process of doing science, didn't understand what they were looking at?

Re:News?

[fbjon]

The news is that there was indeed a burst that we do not understand. The burst wasn't known "yesterday" to be significant, but now we know that it is. Did you know that such immensely powerful events could occur in the universe?

I find your lack of humility disturbing. </obStarwars>

Re:News?

[iminplaya]

Where's the fucking news?

Made ya look...

Re:News?

[Smallpond]

So, something happened 6 years ago, and nobody knew what it was.

They still don't.

Where's the fucking news?

The 5 ms burst was received 6 years ago, but the following signal has just been decoded.
It says: "Oops"

Re:News?

[Shag]

Well heck, if it's "news" every time there's not an explanation for something... excuse me, I've got a few thousand peer-reviewed papers to go write.

Or have they decided on a mechanism for white dwarves exceeding the Chandrasekhar mass before blowing themselves up?

Re:News?

[Chapter80]

Where's the fucking news?

You'll find that at The Onion.

ST reference

[suso]

Praxis?

Re:ST reference

[XanC]

Praxis is their key energy production facility...

Re:ST reference

[orkysoft]

Gamma.

Re:ST reference

[Elemenope]

I can confirm the location of Praxis, but...

What?

I cannot confirm the existence of Praxis.

Re:ST reference

[BlueStrat]

Praxis?

Nah, obviously Praxis' detonation would have created a much broader spectrum of radiation over a much longer duration. I'd say offhand that it was some poor space-traders' ships' warp engine with malfunctioning antimatter injectors, experiencing a warp-core collapse. Let's just hope the poor slob was able to jettison the core before the collapse, or there'll be some *very* well-done tribbles floating in interstellar space!

Cheers!

Strat

Time machines at last!

[QuickFox]

an abnormally strong five millisecond burst to be detected six years ago You know that research into time machines is finally making progress when you get to read combinations of past and future tense like in this report about an event that is to be detected six years ago.

Re:Time machines at last!

[darkhitman]

Well, really it just means that in a few days or so, the 6 yr anniversary of it being detected will have come...I think. Good ol' future perfect imperative?

Re:Time machines at last!

[QuickFox]

Indeed it has nothing to do with tenses, I should have said mixture of past and future.

And you got modded up informative? Of course I got modded up informative. I'm the only one so far informing people about how this is related to recent developments in time machine research.

Sometimes I get the impression that moderators are joking by giving surprising mods.

Re:Time machines at last!

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

There is nothing grammatically incorrect or even illogical about that sentence. The subject is an event that occurred in the more distant past which would have caused the 6 year old burst.

Re:Time machines at last!

[Blakey Rat]

But was it detected? Or wasn't it? The suspense is killing me!

It it was "to be discovered" six years ago, surely we'd know if it actually was by now.

Re:Time machines at last!

[Anonymous Coward]

The sentence is awkwardly worded, and took me a few reads to understand the OP's intent.

The sentence is:
"Astronomers are still speculating as to what could have caused [an abnormally strong five millisecond burst] to be detected six years ago."

The structure is:
"Astronomers are still speculating as to what could have caused [it] to be detected six years ago."

The fact that "it" is so long, makes it seems as though "caused" and "to be" are separate.

It's a message from the aliens:

[Chemisor]

"Die, spammer, die!"

Re:It's a message from the aliens:

[n6kuy]

That's German for, "The spammer, the", right?

The Great Green Arkleseizure....

[Anonymous Coward]

The Coming Of The Great White Handkerchief is at hand.

Re:The Great Green Arkleseizure....

[empaler]

Finally, somebody else who actually read the books! :-D

Re:The Great Green Arkleseizure....

[Headcase88]

The great white handkerchief is in the British mini-series as well.

Re:The Great Green Arkleseizure....

[ynososiduts]

"Sorry for the inconvenience." - God.

You'd think geeks would know immediately

[sunwukong]

The amount of this dispersion, the astronomers said, indicates that the signal likely originated about three billion light-years from Earth. Lesse, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away ...

Deathstar I or II?

Re:You'd think geeks would know immediately

[Adambomb]

lightspeed delay!

Re:You'd think geeks would know immediately

[sootman]

Thanks for one of the best Slashdot posts ever. Very clever. :-)

Re:You'd think geeks would know immediately

[justthisdude]

I felt a great disturbance in the Force...as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

Re:You'd think geeks would know immediately

[talfa]

The amount of this dispersion, the astronomers said, indicates that the signal likely originated about three billion light-years from Earth.

Lesse, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away ...

Deathstar I or II?

Question is, a Jedi on Earth, would he have felt it six years or three billion years ago?

Re:You'd think geeks would know immediately

[Chr0n0]

It's all elementary dear Watson...
Deathstar I and II's destructions were 3 years apart
Considering the astronomers are still puzzled at what they received 6 years ago, and that there isn't any mention if it happened again 3 years afterwards (3 years ago), so we can deduct that it was the second Deathstar!

Now to finally confirm it, they just had to roll back their logs to 9 years ago or so for similiar readings!

I feel so brilliant! yet so geeky at the same time...

I felt it too.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I felt as though millions of voices cried out in terror and they were silenced. Somehow I thought it came from the incinerator that handled the ballots on Florida. But ...

Re:I felt it too.

[ImaLamer]

It was another big bang! Another universe is growing inside us, and will grow to be the same size as ours eventually, but by then we shall be bigger. It will be amazing to see how we coexist.

Incompetence

[Waffle Iron]

This tragic explosion was the result of idiot low level managers ordering ill-advised experiments with all of the control rods pulled out of the Dyson Sphere.

I do know what geeks think...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, the colonel was drunk and forgot that the Deathstar's beam dissipates as the cube of the distance from the planet. Clearly out of range and making a fool of himself. Vader would not be pleased.

What's a "god"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it some kind of astronomical object I haven't read about in my text books yet?

Re:What's a "god"?

[DaveWick79]

God doesn't believe in atheists; therefore, atheists do not exist.

Re:What's a "god"?

[just_a_monkey]

Yep. You know these guys Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Saturn and Pluto (and a heap of others)? Gods, all (or most) of them.

Re:What's a "god"?

[xPsi]

Damn! I just vanished in a puff of logic.

Re:What's a "god"?

[somersault]

Uranuse may be godly, but Pluto way your Mars bar before everyone else wants one (or most) of them..

Re:What's a "god"?

[somersault]

My apologies. I'm a bit pissed. Yay.

Re:What's a "god"?

[toddhunter]

no, God is an atheist so he has to believe in atheists..which means he does not exist.

Re:What's a "god"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just vanished in a puff of logic.

I'm loco for logic puffs. (a part of this complete breakfast.)

Re:What's a "god"?

[h4rm0ny]

My apologies. I'm a bit pissed. Yay.

s/bit/lot

There, fixed. :)

Confused; instead of donkeys per forthnite etc

[viking80]

(10exp33 Joules), equivalent to a large (2000MW) power station running for two billion billion years.'"

This is basically
1. 1 sun-month (power of the sun 4x10^26W for a month), or
2. 0.5% of a supernova

Re:Confused; instead of donkeys per forthnite etc

[spoonist]

Hmmm.... yeah.... but what's that in Libraries of Congress??

Re:Confused; instead of donkeys per forthnite etc

[viking80]

To clarify (2): The power of a supernova is 200x this event(0.5%), and in addition it lasts for weeks, so total energy of a supernova is maybe 7 orders of magnitude more.

Re:Confused; instead of donkeys per forthnite etc

[MillionthMonkey]

How much energy do supernovae release in EM, compared with the event mentioned in TFA?

About 1% is EM (rest is neutrinos). Of that 1%, about 1% of that is in the visible spectrum. From a NOVA episode I think I remembered watching a few years ago.

Re:Confused; instead of donkeys per forthnite etc

[chebucto]

I prefer football fields of Hiroshima bombs as a unit of energy:

Little Boy was 3m x 0.7m for an area of 2.1m^2. It released 12kt of energy (1kt = 4.184E12 Joules)
A football field is 109.7 x 48.8m for an area of roughly 5353m^2

Thus, a football field could contain 2549 Hiroshima bombs; at 12kt each, that equals 30588 kt.

30588 x 4.18E12 J = 1.27857E17 J

Thus, 1 football field of Hiroshima bombs is about 1E17 Joules.

So, this event produced 1E33J, which is 1E16 football fields of Hiroshima bombs. Now that's a big 'splosion!

Re:Confused; instead of donkeys per forthnite etc

[Quixote]

Glad you asked.

E = mc^2 ; so m = E/c^2 .
Plug in 10^33 for E, and 3x10^8 for c.
You get m = 11111111111111111 Kg.
Assume each book in LoC weighs on average 2Kg to simplify things.
At last count the LoC had about 20M books.
Dividing 11111111111111111 by (20,000,000 * 2), we get 277777777.
In other words, this was equivalent to 277 million libraries of Congress.
// E&OE

Re:Confused; instead of donkeys per forthnite etc

[einhverfr]

Hmmm.... yeah.... but what's that in Libraries of Congress?? Don't you mean Liberaries of Congress per War of 1812?

I mean, how many books would the British have to burn to generate this much energy?

Re:Confused; instead of donkeys per forthnite etc

[MillionthMonkey]

Hmmm.... yeah.... but what's that in Libraries of Congress??

This is how you get a job at Google: The Library of Congress has 30,000,000 books. Assume each book weighs 1 kg. Then the explosion's mass equivalent would be approximately equal to several billion Libraries of Congress. It's almost like that Oprah episode where everyone gets a car. Every human being on the planet gets a Library of Congress. YOU get a Library of Congress! YOU get a Library of Congress! EVERYONE GETS A LIBRARY OF CONGRESS!

Re:Confused; instead of donkeys per forthnite etc

[HungSoLow]

Direct mass to energy conversion or burning the books?

Re:Confused; instead of donkeys per forthnite etc

[Nextraztus]

How many intertubes will it take to move all those Libraries of Congress?

Re:Confused; instead of donkeys per forthnite etc

[shrikel]

Sorry, you've got the dimensions wrong. This is ENERGY. Libraries of Congress are INFORMATION or TEXT. The proper unit here is Bonfires of Congress. But I'm not sure that will be adopted as an SI unit anytime soon, given how book-burnings are rather out of vogue these days.

Re:Confused; instead of donkeys per forthnite etc

[windsurfer619]

One, but it'll take 3 billion years.

Re:Confused; instead of donkeys per forthnite etc

[Arancaytar]

Could it reach 5 Gigalols?

(Wait, make that 5 Gigagroans.)

Re:Confused; instead of donkeys per forthnite etc

[macshit]

It's almost like that Oprah episode where everyone gets a car. Every human being on the planet gets a Library of Congress.

Yeah, but those were pretty crappy cars. So does this mean we all get a LOC where every book is missing the last 50 pages?!? Arghhh, this blast was clearly evil! Microsoft, Microsoft!!!!

Re:Confused; instead of donkeys per forthnite etc

[Xyrus]

Another coincidence: 3 billion years is about the time it will take for this guy to get laid. :)

~X~

Someone Activated the Halo system

[jameskojiro]

Someone Activated the Halo system a couple hundred thousand years ago and this is just a reflection of the original signal that bounced off the Galaxy's magnetic field. It took tousands of years to reach us.

I Blame the Forerunners.

Re:Someone Activated the Halo system

[Jesus_666]

I say a trih xeem went off, but most of the blast was contained by an ancient Jjaro space station.

German to English....

[iknownuttin]

"Die, spammer, die!"

I don't understand German very well so I translated your statement on Babelfish and this is what I got:

"those, more spammer, those!"

I don't get it? It must be a German Idiom.

Re:German to English....

[LiquidMind]

if i may (speaking both languages fairly well)...

'die' (pronounced dee) is like the English 'the', except the German variant has 3 of them, one for female (die), male (der), and neuter (das). Added to that, you use 'die' when addressing more than one of something, like 'die autos,' hence "those" in the translation.

as for the 'more spammer' part, that makes no sense; I'm curious how Babelfish arrived at that.

and as a side note, the Sideshow Bob bit was grammatically incorrect. Bart is male, the correct phrase would have been "Der Bart, Der." Watching that episode in Germany (translated and all) made even less sense, I could not fathom how they arrived at the 'Die Bart' part, as the German word for that would have been 'stirb.'

Re:German to English....

[Jesus_666]

and as a side note, the Sideshow Bob bit was grammatically incorrect. Bart is male, the correct phrase would have been "Der Bart, Der." Watching that episode in Germany (translated and all) made even less sense, I could not fathom how they arrived at the 'Die Bart' part, as the German word for that would have been 'stirb.'

Bob tattooed "die Bart, die" on his chest, with the English meaning of wanting Bart to die. When questioned about it he told the interviewers that it was German for "the Bart, the", expecting the interviewers to have no idea of German grammar. The interviewers, sticking to typical Simpson group stupidity, ignore the fact that regardless of Grammar, "the Bart, the" is obvious nonsense and release him on the grounds that "someone who speaks German can't be a bad person".

The bad translation was an inherent part of the joke. Of course, in the German version it didn't really work.

Aliens

[PPH]

That was a ping from an alien civilization. Since we didn't answer, they have classified our solar system as uninhabited by intelligent life and won't bother trying again.

Aliens: "Nothing to see here. Move along."

Re:Aliens

[CheeseTroll]

If that was their ping, I'd hate to see their router!

Re:Aliens

[uop]

Just speculating, but couldn't this be a kind of galactic lighthouse?
Frequency doesn't have to be high (once every few years would be fine).
Signal is strong enough to sense even when you don't have a clear view of the skies.

Re:Aliens

[sqrrl101]

They're made out of meat?

http://www.terrybisson.com/meat.html

Radar chirp

[G4from128k]

Perhaps the signal was manmade. And if the signal saturated the detector, then it's even harder to judge the waveform and deduce what caused it. TFA says the frequency shifted during the pulse. That's not uncommon in the pulses used in radar which may been on a passing plane or satellite. Even if the frequency bands are different, the harmonic effect means that a strong source of one frequency may appear as a weak source of a different frequency. Either that, or someone made microwave popcorn on a lonely night and wouldn't confess.

Of course, I've not seen the data and IANARA.

Re:Radar chirp

[Stray7Xi]

I'm not a radar engineer (But I have taken some classes on radar principles). I don't see any mention of what frequencies it was, which I'm sure would rule it out as a radar. But I see a few ways they could eliminate as a radar.

The biggest indicator is likely the shape of the pulse. Even in the best square wave there's a rise time and fall time (the time it takes to go from 0 to 1). However there won't be the same shape when its just sliding frequencies. If you graphed amplitude vs time for thin cross sections of frequencies and then lined up the cross sections for the radar emitter you'd probably see some type of parabola thats uniform in the center frequencies but truncated on the ends where the power went on and off. However if this came from a distant galaxy, every frequency would have the same exact shape of amplitude vs time once you remove the refraction delay.

Secondly being that this is a very large antenna, 210m (large aperture), it is high gain. That means high frequencies must be right in front of the antenna, the lower the frequency the further it can be from its center. At microwave frequency of 2.5ghz (assuming the antenna is circular) this antenna would have a 0.04degree beamwidth. Even down to 30Mhz that'd only be 3.3degrees. So basically this object would have to be right above the antenna or a reflection off something right above it.

Thirdly you can't receive while transmitting (You'll burn out the receiver at the powers the transmitter is operating at). If the pulse was 5ms, and factoring the speed of light that means this radar would be blind to anything closer then 750Km. (c*5ms/2.. its divided by two for roundtrip time). That really pigeonholes its use as a radar. I'm sure there's things that use long pulses, but not for typical air traffic control.

Now I'm ignoring the saturation, its quite likely they can't really analyze the shape of the pulse. It's quite possible that their data is useless for analysis if its oversaturated.

Re:Radar chirp

[patchvonbraun]

The article mentions that they were doing pulsar surveys, which means that the signal arrived over a number of channels, but the pulses
    showed dispersion. Radar signals won't display that kind of behaviour, as far as I know.

If it was at Parkes, it was likely at 326 or 408Mhz.

I run a small radio observatory, and I see large spikes from time to time. It's very likely that 99.9% of them
    are local interference, distant thunderstorm activity, etc. But it's generally acknowledged in the Radio Astronomy
    community, that there *are* unexplained transient phenomenon that are observed from time to time.

Some Pulsars, for example, occasionally emit "super pulses" that are usually orders-of-magnitude stronger than
    the average pulses.

GRBs are also associated with radio afterglow, which can account for some small fraction of the observed
    transient phenomenon.

One of the projects I'd like to do is to have different radio telescopes watching the same portion of sky, but
    separated by enough distance that local RFI isn't a factor. Any transient pulses that arrive at all of the
    telescopes are very likely to have originated from "out there".

Easily explained

[sker]

I picked up the same thing on my instruments.. it was just a video clip of Hitler introducing the 1936 Olympics... that's all. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Re:Easily explained

[raving griff]

Have you considered checking the transmission for other encoded layers?

Re:Easily explained

[Chapter80]

it was just a video clip of Hitler

Once again, God Wins.

Re:Easily explained

[Chapter80]

wow. That's the pot calling the Caucasian black, asstunnel.

No need to duck - it went that far over your head.

Of course it's a Contact reference,

No mystery

[Anonymous Coward]

It was only the end of a war.

Well...

[d0rp]

... that was just Krypton blowing up, of course.

Re:Because it's AUSTRALIAN news.

[QuickFox]

a small, obscure and mostly uninteresting nation like Australia, Small? The 6th largest country in the world is small?

Re:timing

[Reverend528]

I'm not sure you realize quite how small the earth is in relation to the universe.

The assumptions likely don't hold up...

[cdn-programmer]

The assumption likely is that the energy is radiated in all directions. This puts the power varying as 1/d^2 which is a very small number when d gets rather large. The consequence of this is that if we get a signal of magnitude "x" then one would infer from this assumption that one must multiply by d^2 in order to calculate the energy at source.

If this energy was focused as it is say by a laser then the original power can be considerably lower. A parabolic lens will also focus the radiation but not nearly as well as a laser. One way this can be focused naturally is to simply put a large gravity well in the path the light takes between source and us.

The phenomenon may be little more complex than a gravity well which passed between us. If this gravity well is moving at the right speed then the period of time the energy remains focused can be short. It would be very interesting to find the gravitational lens (if this is what happened) is actually in orbit and we manage to pick up the pulse again.

The thing is with the proper focus all the assumptions of the size of the burst just fly out the window.

Re:The assumptions likely don't hold up...

[confused_demon]

Gamma ray bursts and (I think) supernovas can 'beam' radiation naturally b/c they've got huge magnetic fields inside them. This is the only way that gamma ray bursts are actually calculable in terms of the total energy output by the event (even then it takes 30 solar mass stars).

For supernovas the magnetic fields can be strong enough to cause the particles emitted in weak-force interactions be almost all one time which gives the resulting black hole/neutron star some serious momentum. I think there are some supernova remnants with neutron stars observed zipping out of them at 40% of the speed of light.

Re:It was the negative creative energy unleashed

[ABoerma]

They felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

There was a Big Bang 12 billion years ago

[Howitzer86]

So this is the Little Bang.

They really have no idea...

[yariv]

And I don't understand why do they have to guess before doing some serious research. They have given to possible explanations, collision of two nuetron stars, that sould produce radiation in higher frequencies (gamma ray, see Gamma Ray Bursts) and black hole evaporation, which shouldn't be that intensive (unless when the black hole is spinning, the energy released should be 11 orders of magnitude higher, see Black Hole Evaporation).

Of course, I might be wrong. First, I'm not an astronomer. Second, I understand most things about black holes and nuetron stars suppose to include aspects of relativity and quantum theory, so both should not be applied to them... (as they contradict)

Breaker 1 9

[nsaspook]

I had my CB amp cranked to 11 that day. Sorry bout that.

Star Wars!

[ivoras]

You know those spectacular space battles you've been watching on TV all the time? Well now you know what happens when an Imperial huge-mega-ultra-destroyer-obliterator fires... and misses. Some poor planet thousands of light years away gets powdered to dust. We're lucky that was a shot from a tiny-wee-shuttle, from thousands of years away these cause just a 5 ms blip.

Re:Time machines at last! - OB Hitchhikers quote

[notnAP]

"One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem involved in becoming your own father or mother that a broadminded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. ... The major problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveller's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations."

Douglas Adams

SDF-1

[icebones]

sounds like we finally detect the SDF-1's main gun. Nice to know the zentradi are 3 billion light years away, or at least they were. ;)

Re:Because it's AUSTRALIAN news.

[OrangeTide]

6th is pretty small. Canada has Australia beat, perhaps we should focus on Canadians from this point forward.

Now being a country with the 6th lowest population density is far more interesting.

It was a stargate Wormhole beem now we have a way.

[Joe The Dragon]

It was a stargate Wormhole beam now we have a way to cover them up now that we now what to look for.

Beams can occur naturally

[yariv]

If the object releasing the energy is rotating. This happens in pulsars, for example, and should happen when a massive rotating star collapses into a black hole, and in astrometric binary stars (when only one partner is actually a star, the other is a dead star), with an accretion disk.

We don't have this phenomenon...

[DaftShadow]

We don't have atheists like in your country... we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you that we have this.

Re:Because it's AUSTRALIAN news.

[maxwell demon]

Small? The 6th largest country in the world is small? Of course. Didn't they tell you that we live in a small world? :-)

Re:What's an "athiest"?

[KeensMustard]

Is that a label which cultists apply to those who refuse to join their cult? I think you'll find it's a label that certain cultists apply to themselves.

It's full of stars

[ahem]

Was the moon, by chance, anywhere in that area of the sky, and was there a monolith present?

Radar pulse

[sanimalp]

It was probably a radar pulse from a radar equipped object flying overhead.

Obviously the power of the signal is pretty high, but something flying close overhead could possibly cause a signal like that on equipment calibrated to be observing radio frequencies at trillionths of a watt. I am sure there is not a linear correlation to the sensitivity of the equipment to varying power observations.

To test my hypothesis, I would figure out what frequency or frequencies were observed at the time, and compare them with know earth based frequency usage. If one happens to be an aircraft or satellite radar, you have your answer.

Re:Radar pulse

[Fantastic Lad]

Cuz none of the other scientists who study space for a living would have thought of that.

To test your hypothesis, before you go looking for known frequencies, you would probably benefit if you stopped saying things like, "I'm sure there was. . ." and "It was probably a. . ."

-FL

Manowar

[slayermet420]

It's simple. It's the same thing that caused the power blackout in the Northeast US a few years ago. Manowar

Re:Manowar

[Warshadow]

Other bands play, Manowar fakes extra-terrestrial signals?

Re:Manowar

[geminidomino]

It was the gods making heavy metal on another world of silence and darkness.

matrix...

[saleenS281]

The matrix was resetting, duh.

Re:Because it's AUSTRALIAN news.

[Surt]

1,2 : large
3,4,5 : medium
6+ : small

It's the standard scientific ranking system.

Re:What's an "athiest"?

[Greg_D]

Is that a label which cultists apply to those who refuse to join their cult?

Windows users.

boooooooooom

[DragonTHC]

it was a doomsday weapon destroying a nearby race of beings.

we're next. let's see jesus and mohammed and buddha band together and fight off the aliens.

Re:boooooooooom

[TheRaven64]

I know Americans tend to have a slightly different idea of distance to the rest of us, but where are you from that 3 million light years counts as 'near?'

Re:boooooooooom

[DragonTHC]

I was born in the Sol system. Third planet from the main star.

Re:Pulse length points to manmade signal.

[xPsi]

You raise a good point. If it were "exactly" 5ms I would be suspicious. But I'm guessing the article is just reporting 5ms as an approximation. The real issue is that the signal is very short in duration. A supernova, which has comparable energy, is something that lasts minutes. A pulse on the order of ms is not only difficult to measure (for astro people) it is also not easily explained physically.

Bloody Vorlons

[Nim82]

Bloody Vorlons - playing with things they shouldn't..

Re:timing

[Cheesey]

No, he makes a valid point. With a really accurate clock, you could use the time difference to detect (or confirm) the source of the signal. GPS works that way, and radio astronomers do use extremely accurate clocks for exactly this reason. The Earth is relatively tiny, but in the same sense, the speed of light is relatively slow.

Unfortunately the signal was only picked up at one observatory, a fact that suggests an error to me. If it had been independently detected elsewhere, that would be much more interesting.

Obvious

[Ryandor]

...as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

(I can't believe no one accurately posted that one yet)

Re:Obvious

[metachimp]

Look! They're heading for that small moon!

That's no moon. It's a space station...

News for Nerds...

[Etherwalk]

Because it's something new that they didn't understand. Hence, in the literal form, news. New data! Something that might be a deep and meaningful key to the universe! Or statistically unlikely interference from an old bit of stray noise. I wouldn't say anything that's science is necessarily news for the masses--some people simply don't care when we discover something new unless it impacts their work day or family life.

But this is news for nerds, not news for Thoreau.

Z-Machine

[bdkraem]

Makes the Z-machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_machine look like nothin.

Hello, Dave. Are you there?

[Neanderthal Ninny]

Remember 2001: A Space Odyssey? They trying to talk to us... rather loudly.

I have three words for you

[snowleopard10101]

War Against Aliens

Re:timing

[Basehart]

FWIW I was camping out in the desert around the time this event occurred and didn't hear a thing, not one thing I tell you.

Re:What's an "athiest"?

[rbanffy]

I use to joke that, while I do not believe there is a God, I lack the faith required to be an atheist.

Re:Ah, the logic of self-delusion.

[finity]

Your fantasy owuld be funny were it not just part the cause of so much mayhem and misery in this world.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the cause of so much mayhem and misery in this world has been mostly religion/cult on religion/cult.

"Powerful Blast Confuses Astronomers"

[autophile]

After the blast, astronomers from universities across the country were seen wandering dazedly through the halls and campus greens. The sky-gazers did not seem to know where they were, nor what they were doing there. Some astronomers were found in a parking lot below Mt. Palomar, with car keys in their hands, unable to locate their own vehicles. Some had to be given emergency oxygen because, not knowing their altitude, they had forgotten their oxygen masks.

Emergency psychiatrists were called in to deal with the situation.

"I've never seen anything like it," said Dr. Itznada Seegar of the Federal Emergency Psychiatric Adminstration. "These astronomers are, to put it in layman's terms, dazed and confused. You can use that movie reference, right?"

Dr. Adeep S. Komplacs posited a new cosmic psychic ray. Surrounded by clouds of THC byproducts, he remarked, "I've heard of cosmic rays, but this was one cosmic cosmic ray, dude!"

As things slowly return to normal, said one Astronomy Department head, "Thank God the effect is wearing off. Now we can get our astronomers' heads back in the clouds."

Re:"Powerful Blast Confuses Astronomers"

[tinkerton]

The inane comparison with how long a powerstation has to run to produce that much energy didn't do those astronomers any good either.

Re:"Powerful Blast Confuses Astronomers"

[ChrisMaple]

I thought EMP was supposed to affect computers and other electronic devices, not astronomers.

The signal was spread out, with higher frequenc

[Vellmont]

To me that suggests that, while the actual event at the location it occurs can be reasonably said to have lasted less than five milliseconds, the actual recording of data lasted longer than that period of time, and there are certain identifiable characteristics in the data that an astronomer would expect to find, both of which seem to strongly suggest that the event really did occur.

No, what happened first was the astronomers analyzed a piece of data (actually a large mass of data). They were looking specifically for a specific signature. They then found one piece of data in that mass of data that had that signature. They went looking for a signature and found it. How do we know that piece of data was real, and not just an accident?

The thing you have to realize is that all experiments have flaws, and all experiments have errors. With only one piece of data it's likely that this is an error. The fact that there's an explanation for the data doesn't really count. They went looking for that signature in the first place.

Obligatory Star Trek Reference...

[Shaltenn]

3 billion years ago (+6!) an advanced civilzation attempted harness the power of the perfect particle. Particle 010, the Omega Particle. This civilization no longer exists (hence we haven't seen another blip) and the space around it is completely destabilized - preventing us from getting even close enough to figure out exactly what happened.

Re:Ah, the logic of self-delusion.

[compro01]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the cause of so much mayhem and misery in this world has been mostly religion/cult on religion/cult.

yes, but some (NOT ALL!) atheists seem to be making a religion out of not believing in religion and push their beliefs at least as vigorously as your average fundamentalist.

Only on /.

[XanC]

...would a comment like that get modded "informative"!

Should be OK

[professorfalcon]

As long as The Doctor doesn't show up, it's probably nothing.

I sense a disturbance in the force.

[xuanyou]

Alderaan.

Re:Ah, the logic of self-delusion.

[largesnike]

Your fantasy owuld be funny were it not just part the cause of so much mayhem and misery in this world I'm getting pretty tired of athiest sanctimoniousness.

Its as if when we all become athiests we'll have nothing to fight about, and we'll all live in a science-driven paradise where everyone will be rationalists

I believe Stalin was an athiest - he managed to kill 30 odd million without the need of religion, and another athiest, Pol Pot, cleaned out most of his country without religion as well.

May be coincidence but

[zmower]

Something freaky happened on that day. I woke up in the middle of the night because the light in our bedroom was on. Flicking the light switch didn't turn off the bulb and so I just went back to bed puzzled and a little scared something had shorted. But in the morning the light worked again.

Mmm, maybe it had something to do with the big hole they found in the universe recently?

Huge amount of power ?

[Ihlosi]

It put out a huge amount of power (10exp33 Joules), equivalent to a large (2000MW) power station running for two billion billion years.

I'm surprised that this would be a huge amount of power for astronomers. The average star should output that much power probably every few seconds. Probably not in the RF band, but still ...

This doesn't surprise me...

[OneoFamillion]

Knowing the kind of people who get into astronomy, even a soft jab usually knocks their lights out.

oh shit.

[Kadmos]

Sorry, we had had a few and were just having a quick game on the scope and some prick hit some equipment. We didn't think anybody would notice. It's all a bit embarrassing really and we don't do that sort of thing anymore. But if anyone cares Parkes won by three wickets and 34 runs.

BTW: Over the edge of the dish is out and the batsman gets the ball.

Re:Ah, the logic of self-delusion.

[dunkelfalke]

atheists, not athiests, first.
second, stalin never managed to kill 30 millions, that was just a cold war propaganda.
third, hitler was a catholic.

Re:Ah, the logic of self-delusion.

[bhiestand]

Your fantasy owuld be funny were it not just part the cause of so much mayhem and misery in this world.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the cause of so much mayhem and misery in this world has been mostly religion/cult on religion/cult.

This only makes atheists more comfortable when theists realize that non-believers, the most hated group in America, are not members of a religion or cult.

Stupid "Funny" Comments

[Fleetie]

Fuck me; isn't there any way to filter out ALL comments modded "Funny"? Because they aren't "funny"; they're asinine, and indicative of people who DON'T understand the present subject, and can only grunt like pigs. This is interesting; so STOP with the "funny" comments already. Fuck, and I thought this was a forum for people with some intelligence and knowledge. I thought I was going somewhere interesting, and I wandered into a pig farm, and now I'm stinking and covered in shit and have gruntinnitus. Free clue: If you're intending to post something with the hope that it be modded "funny", then STOP NOW, because you're a sad 'tard that needs at least a damn good kicking, and possibly a bullet in the head - or to escape that, go out and get yourself a fucking girlfriend.

Re:Stupid "Funny" Comments

[greyblack]

Mod parent "Funny", please.

Re:Stupid "Funny" Comments

[Russ Nelson]

Oink. Oink oink oink oink. Oink grunt grunt oink. Grunt grunt a-grunty grunt, oink. Oink oink oinkity oink.

Re:Stupid "Funny" Comments

[Russ Nelson]

Hmmmmm..... I tried turning down the moderation level to four, but that just got me the even less funny joke. I fear there is no hope for you. This is Slashdot, after all. What were you sexpecting?

Re:Stupid "Funny" Comments

[Rudisaurus]

[...]or to escape that, go out and get yourself a fucking girlfriend

(slaps self on head)

THAT's where I went wrong: I have a non-fucking girlfriend! Thank you!

Re:Stupid "Funny" Comments

[stormy_petral]

I'd like to filter all the comments with the word "fuck" in them.

Re:Ah, the logic of self-delusion.

[bhiestand]

yes, but some (NOT ALL!) atheists seem to be making a religion out of not believing in religion and push their beliefs at least as vigorously as your average fundamentalist. Yes, I know what you mean. It's not the Atheists with their Arrogant Bibles that concern me, though. Right now I'm most concerned with the Round-Earth Cult.

You do realize, don't you, that there's a fundamental difference between shouting "THE SKY IS BLUE!" or "WE DON'T BELIEVE IN GOD, THIS IS WHY YOUR ARGUMENTS ARE WRONG, NOW LEAVE US ALONE!" and shouting things like "If the evidence contradicts my beliefs, the evidence is wrong"? (I know, bad grammar, but I'm too tired to mess with it)

Anyways, "atheism is a religion like bald is a hair color" says it best here. Atheists may have banded together in vocal groups that act in a similar manner (denouncing the gods of others, etc.), but this does not make them religious. Helium has a pretty good little article on this.

Re:Ah, the logic of self-delusion.

[bhiestand]

This only makes atheists more comfortable when theists realize that non-believers, the most hated group in America, are not members of a religion or cult.

Nope, sorry.

When you ask a Jew or a Christian or a Wiccan what an Atheist is, they won't say "someone who doesn't believe." They will say "someone who believes God doesn't exist." It's a fundamental difference.

And if you ask a Christian how old the earth is, he might say "6000 years", but this does not make him correct. There is, of course, an argument over the definition of atheism. It seems clear to me that atheism should mean a lack of belief, rather than an active disbelief, but we can use the more exact terms of strong and weak atheist.

Science can neither prove nor disprove the Christian God, nor any tenable modern deity. This means that the default answer is "I don't know", not "that's a fairy tale!" (snip)

I'm glad we agree. You can't disprove the existence of anything, but it is quite easy to prove the existence of most things. Unicorns, leprechauns, and Big Foot are great examples of things that probably don't exist but can't be disproved. And the default answer, assuming no evidence in either direction, is, indeed "I don't know". Every supernatural "theory" must be evaluated and weighed against the evidence to establish some sort of probability. My evaluation, having read several versions of the Christian bible, is that it is extremely unlikely that the Christian god exists. I started out by saying "I don't know, but I'll look into it." Given the lack of any evidence that should be quite bountiful if their evidence were true, and the inherent logical contradictions involved, I estimate the probably of the Christian God's existence at less than 1%. As such, I'm about 99% certain that that god does not exist. This makes me more certain than Richard Dawkins, but I still admit that I could be wrong, and I would happily re-evaluate the situation if I ever saw new evidence.

Very few atheists actually go so far as to say "I know that there certainly are no gods", they simply think it's more likely that there's a community of underwear gnomes and a demon that feeds off of socks in the dryer. I would like to see some sources saying that even a sizable minority of believers admit that they don't actually know.

It's only those few anti-believers that most everyone hates -- "theists" because they're so obnoxious about it, and "not-knowers" because they make them look bad.

(If you believe that God doesn't exist -- not that it's beyond knowledge, or that you simply don't believe -- then you're a capital-A Atheist, and you have a religion.)

What angers strong atheists is that theists attempt to discredit or simply deny any evidence that contradicts their beliefs. Why should we leave the Intelligent Design "Theory" alone when they try to discredit or replace our evidence and theories simply because they don't like the direction the evidence points?

I used to be an apathetic agnostic. The whole argument seemed absurd and like a waste of time to me. Then I got into an argument with somebody, and she asked me whether I specifically believed that the Christian God didn't exist. I said "Oh, I highly doubt that one exists." It was at this point that I realized that I was both an atheist and an agnostic.

Admitting that I was an atheist and couldn't simply ignore the argument because it was stupid forced me to start really weighing the evidence (and lack thereof) and making up my mind. I have come to the conclusion that the Judeo-Christian god is about as likely leprechauns, but less likely than extraterrestrials visiting earth. Genesis is most certainly a myth, but it's possible that there is some truth in the bible. I don't know whether the Buddha was a higher form of human, or if he was just a glorified philosopher.

In short, I t

Re:Ah, the logic of self-delusion.

[h4rm0ny]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the cause of so much mayhem and misery in this world has been mostly religion/cult on religion/cult.

You're not wrong, but you're incomplete. The cause of so much mayhem and misery in this world has been mostly a minority of power-hungry people and a majority that prefers obedience to accepting responsibility for their own actions. That can be religion, but there are other excuses such as nationalism or political parties. It's fine to be spiritual - it's not bad until you have someone else telling you what God wants.

Re:My question.

[ajs]

Even if he doesn't exist, aren't there some pretty good ideas from religions in general? (spare me and cut the seized and butchered religious stuff out of your logic) If the he in your sentence is the Judeo-Christian God, then that's spelled "He."

So, this is usually, the last defense of someone who realizes that religion is just a coping mechanism, and it might be right. The question is: how would you know? It's not clear to me that if Dr. Martin Luther King were an atheist that he would not have come to the conclusion that peaceful protest was the way to change the world. Same goes for Gandhi and his religion. It's just not clear to me that men aren't capable of the good ideas that they manifest without the underpinnings of religion.

That said, I'm always frustrated that people don't act on their religions' philosophies more. How can you be a Christian, read the Book of Matthew and take part in a war? How can you read the 10 commandments and kill your neighbor in cold blood? Religion doesn't actually seem to to its job if its job is to teach the lessons of civilized behavior.

Re:Because it's AUSTRALIAN news.

[mjwx]

The United states is roughly the same geographic size as Australia. Just though you would like to know that.

Civ or Star? Hires pic

[mattr]

Hope it wasn't another civilization trying out the latest theory..

Hi-res: http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2007/brightburst/Cloud.jpg

Re:Ah, the logic of self-delusion.

[Woldry]

we'll all live in a science-driven paradise where everyone will be rationalists

Does this mean I'll finally get my flying car?

Re:Ah, the logic of self-delusion.

[Artifakt]

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but the cause of so much mayhem and misery in this world has been mostly religion/cult on religion/cult."

OK, since you asked. The cause of so much (organized) mayhem and misery in the world has been mostly philosophical differences that claim to affect real world outcomes. Some of these are specifically religious philosophies vs other religious philosophies (causing, for example, the Spanish inquisition or the crusades). Some have religion as a possibly significant factor, but appear to have other, more major aspects, or religion matters significantly to one side but not the other (The American revolution, The Trail of Tears, the various persecutions of non-Arab Muslims by Arab Muslims). Some are best characterized as not particularly religious disputes (the French revolution. the Holocaust (where the Nazis may have mostly claimed to be Christians, but put people in camps for being 'Genetically Jewish', not for practicing as Jews). Some of the worst start from entirely secular philosophies on at least the initiating side (The actual organized, international warfare part of WW 2, Stalin's purges, Mao's, Pol-Pot's).
        Tale the 'Holy land' for a model - religious warfare abounds (The Old testament accounts of slaughtering the Hebrew's neighbors, The Crusades, the initial Muslim conquest). Of course the area also saw wars from the Hittite Conquest, the Egyptian conquest, Alexander the Great, Tamurlane, the Mongol Horde, the secondary Muslim conquests (The Califate, the Ottoman Empire and others), WW 2, etc., none of which were particularly religious events. The best estimates historians can come up with for the region is secular differences of opinion resulted in roughly 10.5 times as many organized deaths as religious ones.

Re:Because it's AUSTRALIAN news.

[Nimey]

And we could hold the entire Aus population in our prisons, so you wouldn't be homesick.

Sorry,It was me.

[flyneye]

Twas just I,after 3 helpings of Jalepeno laden chili con carne.
Sorry for the inconvenience

offtopic this

[unity100]

correction : "A witty saying proves nothing." -- benjamin franklin

Re:offtopic this

[empaler]

Uncorrection.
Unless you deliver a source for your claim, that is.
He did say "There's many witty men whose brains can't fill their bellies..

Re:Ah, the logic of self-delusion.

[bhiestand]

What evidence would you accept as true? What evidence have you looked at? I would accept any concrete evidence. I've read more books on the subject than I can list, including the KJV and ESV, and have not found a shred of evidence produced in any argument by the best religious scholars.

It doesn't depend on evidence, but on your WILL, whether you want to believe or not. No amount of "evidence" can ever get anyone to believe if they don't WANT to. I have to disagree to an extent. If somebody walked up to me on the street and punched me in the face, I wouldn't want to believe it happened or that somebody would be that cruel, but watching them do it and feeling the blood dripping down my skin would force me to believe it. Conversely, I would love to have a happy place to go after I die where I could be with my loved ones, but I am unable to believe it due to a lack of evidence, or any real logic in the argument. Even if I could force myself to believe it, I'd know I was only doing it to make myself feel better. On top of that, my believing it wouldn't make it true.

It is instructive that Jesus told His enemies that they would not believe, even if someone came back from the dead. Certainly if I actually saw somebody come back from the dead I would believe, but the accounts of a poorly-translated, politically re-edited, ~2000 year old book will never convince me. Perhaps if a 2000 year old man was still walking the earth, I would have good evidence. If, instead of talking to me from the sky, God started [directly] healing amputees, or performed some other undeniable miracle, I would have very good reason to believe. As it stands, I don't have any good evidence and I'm not comfortable with trying to convince myself to believe things I don't simply to make myself feel better about life and death.

Hmmm....

[Lost Penguin]

That was just a targeting burst.....

Re:Because it's AUSTRALIAN news.

[yfkar]

That list makes me really want to change the "Density (Pop per km) to "Pope per km" and set Vatican to 2.3, others to zero. :D

"Exactly" 5 ms?

[seanthenerd]

Keep in mind that milliseconds are a human invention; if the signal was an extra-terrestrial message, the fact that it lined up with human time measurements would be a coincidence (and an unlikely one at that). This sounds more like a "human creation" - ie, either of the two possibilities that NeutronCowboy mentioned.

Re:"Exactly" 5 ms?

[Threni]

> Keep in mind that milliseconds are a human invention; if the signal was an extra-terrestrial message, the fact that it lined up with human time
> measurements would be a coincidence (and an unlikely one at that). This sounds more like a "human creation" - ie, either of the two possibilities
> that NeutronCowboy mentioned.

Also, keep in mind that no-one's suggested this event lasted "exactly" any number of milliseconds. Of course, discovering this fact would require reading the article first...

things to detect and find for aprovement

[PermanentMarker]

What i wonder such a huge blast would have side effects.
Lots of dust atoms etc outthere in space might react on it.
If it was 5 years ago there should be something like a radius, 5 lightyears sphere with radio singal effects.

Have those been found ?

(and is the sphere perfect or not... dark matter effects ??)

A beam sweeping past?

[EtaCarinae]

There are very few violent events in Astrophysics that last exactly 5 ms. What about a beam from a rotating object sweeping over us? Maybe black hole acretion disk rotation axes also precess?

Re:Ah, the logic of self-delusion.

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

I believe Stalin was an athiest
Well Stalin did study at a seminary, so who knows what he believed?

Re:Ah, the logic of self-delusion.

[Shaitan Apistos]

it's not bad until you have someone else telling you what God wants.

That's the only way anyone has ever heard what god wants. Non-existent entities don't give orders.

Re:Ah, the logic of self-delusion.

[Levitate]

*Yawn*

I call Godwin's law ... can we get back to talking about astronomy now?

Re:Ah, the logic of self-delusion.

[h4rm0ny]

it's not bad until you have someone else telling you what God wants.

That's the only way anyone has ever heard what god wants. Non-existent entities don't give orders.

No - many people have stated that they have personally felt spiritual guidance. Now this can be interpreted as God, Ganesha, Allah, The Universal Cosmic Consciousness, some part of the person's own subconscious or the Flying Spaghetti Monster's Noodley Appendage brushing past you in the astral plane, but it doesn't lead to the widespread calamities that result from thousands obediently and unquestioningly following what someone else tells them is right or wrong. You say that it's the "only way that anyone hears what God wants?" No - there are two ways - self-interpretation and passing on responsibility to another. It's the latter that is so destructive, unless you're suggesting that masses of people will simultaneously get the same intuition toward something destructive without being told it by a politician, priest, economist, etc.

Re:Ah, the logic of self-delusion.

[arminw]

.....I would accept any concrete evidence.....

So give me an example of what you would consider "concrete" evidence.

(.....my believing it wouldn't make it true.......)

How do you know anything is true. In the end, you have to believe it is true or not. Jesus made some astounding statements. Among others, He said "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father but by Me." (John 14:6) That among the many other supposed utterances (supposed, since you are skeptical of them) is either: 1) extremely arrogant, 2) self deceived or deliberately false, 3) truthful, Jesus is who He said He is; God come to earth, Immanuel, God with us. You may decide, only by belief, in which category you put Him. Ultimately it comes down to your will, and the ramifications of your choice, of your will, for your life. If you would pick the third choice, then you know you'd better find out what requirements God has put upon your life. You may not want to acknowledge that the Creator God of all has a right to demand your loyalty and obedience. That really is the crux of the matter. Denying His existence is a common way of deceiving yourself. You KNOW, that IF there is a God, you owe Him your very life.

(.... but the accounts of a poorly-translated, politically re-edited, ~2000 year old book will never convince me......)

So then you don't believe anything you read in any history book, whether recent or ancient history? On what criteria do you decide whether to believe any ancient writings? Are the ancient writings and inscriptions of Egypt, Persia, Greece etc. fabrications of fiction? How do you separate truth from fiction? On what criteria do you decide to accept or reject say the Declaration of Independence, or a narrative of the First or second World War, or even an account in the paper about a plane crash in India? In any court of law, written documents tend to be accepted as true, unless it can be shown that these are forgeries.

(....God started [directly] healing amputees, or performed some other undeniable miracle, I would have very good reason to believe......)

That's exactly what God did in Jesus, yet some believed and others not, all according to whether they WANTED to or not. The biggest evidence given was Jesus' resurrection from the dead. Those who believed it was true, wanted to believe it and those who did not want it to be true, did not believe it. His disbelieving enemies even admitted that the miracles he did were undeniable, yet still refused to believe. What makes you think it would be different today? If Jesus personally came today and emptied a few large hospitals by healing all the patients, do you think that some might accuse him of practicing medicine without a license? If He turned water to wine, is it likely that some might accuse Him of violating liquor laws? Are people any different today than they were back then?

It's really comes down to wanting to believe and accepting the ramifications of such belief. If the logical consequences of your belief are highly repugnant to you, such as having to submit your WILL to God's, no amount of evidence will make you believe. You either submit your will to His or not. It's not that you can't, but that you don't WANT to. A man convinced against his will remains unconvinced still.

Re:Ah, the logic of self-delusion.

[NotZed]

> (.....my believing it wouldn't make it true.......)
>
> How do you know anything is true. In the end, you have to believe it is true or not.

Well I know a+a=2a is true, and that takes no belief - there is no room for belief in mathematics. So your argument doesn't hold up at all.

This is where theists get confused - science is not a belief system, it is a rigorous system for discovering details of the natural (real) world. 'Believing' something to be true, through the confidence to state a conclusion to a certain level of probability, based on repeatable results, is not even close to 'belief through faith'.

If you're an adult still believing in fairy tales - might I suggest you improve your education.

Re:Ah, the logic of self-delusion.

[arminw]

.....science is not a belief system.....

Of course not! Scientists of the past BELIEVED that light traveled at infinite speed. They repeatedly tested this with lanterns and shutters. The yBELIEVED that disease was caused by bad air and treated sickness by blood letting. The killed George Washington that way. They BELIEVED that atoms were indivisible. After that they believed that protons and neutrons were. They still believe electrons are fundamental and that the speed of light was always what we measure today. Ultimately they have to believe their senses, just like everybody else.

When you get into a car, airplane. elevator or horse-cart you have to believe they are safe and properly maintained. You don't and can't KNOW this. You have faith that the future is reasonably predicted by the past, but you can never be sure. Your whole life operates on faith.

You didn't answer my question about what God would have to to do, to give you enough evidence so you would WANT to believe and obey Him. Belief is not a matter of education. It was the most educated element of society, those proud of their knowledge, that hated Jesus the most and were behind His execution. If it were a matter of education, Jesus would not have held up little children as the epitome of belief and a needed quality to be a good citizen of God's kingdom.

The entire creation, is a KINGDOM, not a democracy or republic. A kingdom always has a King. Anyone who defies the King commits treason. Any creature that defies God commits cosmic treason and is worthy of death. Because we all have committed treason against the Creator, the rightful King of the Universe, we all die. God however also extends mercy to those who would ask Him for mercy by faith. You can either have justice which is death, or you can plead for mercy. You choose. Asking in faith, in Jesus name activates God's mercy. No visit to Mecca, bathe in a specific river, or any other religious rite is needed nor accepted. Anyone who doesn't WANT to believe cannot have the everlasting death sentence lifted by God's mercy.

Re:My question.

[tehcyder]

It's not clear to me that if Dr. Martin Luther King were an atheist that he would not have come to the conclusion that peaceful protest was the way to change the world. Same goes for Gandhi and his religion. It's just not clear to me that men aren't capable of the good ideas that they manifest without the underpinnings of religion

I don't not want to not disagree with your points but they are rather tortuously phrased.

Re:Ah, the logic of self-delusion.

[KingSkippus]

Wow, you are a piece of work. I don't even know why I'm jumping in this little argument, but...

So you're telling me one story of The Way Things Are. If I go talk to Jews, I'll get another. If I talk to followers of Islam, yet another. Buddhists, another. Hindus, another. Ancient Greeks, another. Native Americans, another. And so on, and so on, and so on.

You have faith that the future is reasonably predicted by the past, but you can never be sure. Your whole life operates on faith.

So which one is right? Given that religion requires faith, which by definition is something you can't prove, what is the deciding factor of which one to pick over another? What if I don't find your particular religion compelling enough, but some other is more in line with what works with my life? Who's to decide which one of us is right or wrong?

My point is that arguing over religion is silly. Killing people over religion is even sillier. (And please, if you think your religion is blameless, look to Oklahoma City, where followers of your religion blew up a federal building; to Birmingham, Alabama, where followers of your religion blew up an abortion clinic; to hooded white men during the civil rights movement; I could go on...) If you to believe in something that has no basis in fact or truth, that's your business, and I won't stop you.

However...

What really irritates me is when the followers of your religion try to impose their will on me. When they defiantly put monuments of your book on public land paid for with my tax dollars. When they also give my tax dollars to charities that spread their faith. When they try to put stickers our children's textbooks designed to undermine the credibility of science that has been rigorously tested and observed.

You didn't answer my question about what God would have to to do, to give you enough evidence so you would WANT to believe and obey Him.

Okay, I'll take a shot at it. I merely ask for being given the benefit that Thomas was. When he doubted, Jesus came to him and allowed him to physically test what he was seeing. How about a miracle? I'm not talking about what people are passing off as miracles today, I'm talking about a doozy. Split the sky open. Want me to not think it's just a hallucination? Then split it open for all to see.

Or raise the dead. That's a good one, too, and probably more appropriate since that's the one that Thomas actually got. We're talking about under controlled circumstances, where medical professionals can certify that there's complete brain death, and no chance of return barring some supernatural phenomenon. You get the idea, this isn't rocket science. Give me something that I can see, touch, and evaluate. Thomas is presumably in heaven right now because he had the evidence. Why am I going to hell when the same evidence would convince me?

Re:Ah, the logic of self-delusion.

[kalirion]

Anyways, "atheism is a religion like bald is a hair color" says it best here.

So what's an agnostic's hair like?

Re:Ah, the logic of self-delusion.

[bhiestand]

Anyways, "atheism is a religion like bald is a hair color" says it best here.

So what's an agnostic's hair like? Strong agnosticism: "I don't know whether or not I have hair, and neither do you."
Mild agnosticism: "I can't see if there's hair on top of my head."
Militant agnosticism: "I can't see if there's hair on top of my head, and neither can you."
Apathetic agnosticism: "I don't know if I have hair or not, but why would it matter?"
Model agnosticism: "I don't know about this whole hair thing, but perhaps we could find a way to figure it out?"
Agnostic theism: "I don't really know, but I think I have hair."
Agnostic atheism: "I don't know for sure, but I don't think I have hair."
Ignosticism: "We need to figure out what hair is or might be before that question can be answered."

Re:What's an "athiest"?

[yellowalienbaby]

Look up Agnosticism and Atheism on the wikipedia. Atheis is a belief that there is no God. Agnosticism is the admition that there is no way to know, so why bother making the choice?

Re:What's an "athiest"?

[rbanffy]

Actually, I think it's very likely there is no god. It's only that I am not an atheist because I am not too sure of that. ;-)