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

[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

[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

[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.

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"?

wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

6EQUJ5

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?

[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: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.

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?

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

[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:What's a "god"?

[DaveWick79]

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

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.

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.

[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.

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.