Slashdot Mirror
Youngest Galactic Supernova Found, But No Aliens
Simon Howes writes "After searching for decades, astronomers have found a supernova in our galaxy! So it wasn't little green men we were waiting for. It's located very near the center of the galaxy, about 28,000 light years away, and it's only at most about 140 years old. Quote from Bad Astronomy: 'If you're wondering what all the buzz has been about the past few days over a NASA discovery, then wait no longer. No, it's not aliens or an incoming asteroid. Instead, it's still very cool: astronomers have found the youngest supernova in the Milky Way.'" FiReaNGeL contributes a link to coverage on e! Science News; I think Wired's account of the super-hyped tele-press-conference is the funniest.
Younger than America, that's actually really impressive.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
If it's 140 yrs old, then it can't be farther than 140 ly for us to know about it ??!!?
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Wait -- if it is 28,000 light years away, but only 140 years old .... does that mean we won't see it for another 27,860 years? Or, did it actually occur 28,140 years ago and we could see it 140 years ago?
10b||~10b -- aah, what a question!
If it's 28,000 light years away, how the heck can we know that it's only 140 years old!???
No, I did not read TFA.
I'm not an astrophysicist, but how can something be 28000 ly away but only be 140 years old when it is detected?
If it's 28000 light years away, and only 140 years old, shouldn't it take another 27860 years before we can see it?
Or do they mean that it's 28140 years old now, and we can see what it looked like when it was only 140 years old?
Uh, paint me blue and call me stupid but how do you detect something that is 140 years old and 28,000 light years away? I'm sure there's some voodoo physics that makes sense there but my brain is locked on "28,000 light years means the light takes 28,000 years to get here" and having trouble figuring out how one would detect something that happened 140 years ago at that distance...
Now, obviously, these two statements as presented above are mutually inconsistent. It the supernova went off 140 years ago at a distance of 26,000 LY, there would be no way for us to know about it.
Obviously, the intended meaning was that the supernova exploded around 26,140 years ago, and its light just got here 140 years ago. It's pretty shocking that NASA would make such a big deal of this, and then screw up the announcement in such a major way. Epic fail.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Is that 28,140 years old or are they getting around light speed some how?
Captain Obvious.
My preferred name is frazz, but someone keeps taking it. If you see him, tell him I said hi.
All you need to do is divide the light years away by the smarmy posts about the speed of light in /.
In our case, 28000 ly/200 smartass speed of light posts = 140 years ago.
The more posts we get, the later it happens. Pretty soon, NASA will be able to predict the future! (Don't ask me about the math in that)
What's that say about /. posters?
Could I please see at least 1 more post about the whole 140 years ago and 28k light years conundrum? I didn't quite get it reading the first 20 of them.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
My blog
That issue has been solved! Scientists recently found the missing link between inanimate, lifeless matter and the first primitive protozoa: an Anonymous Coward fossil.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
"The supernova explosion occurred about 140 years ago, making it the most recent supernova in the Milky Way as measured in Earth's time frame. Previously, the last known galactic supernova occurred around 1680, based on studying the expansion of its remnant Cassiopeia A."
What that statement means is from the observational perspective of the earth. If it is a 1000 light years away, and we see the event here and now, then it occurred now "as measured in Earth's Time Frame" but actually from the distance, we know the event occurred a 1000 years ago.
www.effectiveelectrons.com "chips that work" Analog, RF, Mixed Signal
I'm no astrophysicist, but how can something be 28000 ly away but only be 140 years old when it is detected?
Why did some asshat call in to the NASA teleconference and ask about moon crickets, and when the hell did that become a racial slur?
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
From the article:
"The supernova explosion occurred about 140 years ago, making it the most recent supernova in the Milky Way as measured in Earth's time frame. Previously, the last known galactic supernova occurred around 1680, based on studying the expansion of its remnant Cassiopeia A."
So if I'm understanding this, the supernova happened 26,000 years ago (give or take about 140 years, now...more give, granted), as according to the time frame centred on the area of space around the supernova - this is relative to ours, note.
However as far as our local space is concerned, the balloon went up 140 years ago (or possibly sooner). Where this is important is that there was a conjecture that there should be about 3 visible-to-us supernovas every century. There's been a lack of observed ones lately, so the boffins were wondering where they'd gotten off to. Hence the cake and party.
Several different "experts" have predicted that the Milky Way should have at least one supernova every 100 years. Of course, the question has been why we hadn't seen one since 1604. I guess this ... ahem, sheds new light on the issue. As Dr. Reynolds puts it, there's too much interstellar 'gunk' out there.
Disclosure: Dr. Reynolds was co-chair of my thesis committee, but I was doing computational astrophysics, not observational.
Simple. Nothing is just a definition. By positing Nothing, it's opposite, Everything, must also exist. In true Nothingness, there are no definitions or boundaries, but there is also no lack of definitions or boundaries because the lack of something is a definition or boundary. The true void contains every possibility as well as the lack thereof. Duh.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
That composite image looks strangely like the firefox logo.
"Aside from the couple of loonies, I think that went quite well."
How much does it suck to have to say that during the announcement of your career.
NASA is wrong in saying this new supernova is the "youngest" - it is actually just the MOST RECENTLY OBSERVED. The Crab Nebula supernova has it beat as "youngest", exploding occuring only 6500 years ago (and observed less than 300 years ago, in 1731) instead of exploding 28,000 years ago (and observed in 2008).
People need to read about relativity of simultaneity before trying to be smart asses and making laymen comments about events at large distances.
Mod Parent Up! His post made my brain hurt, so it's gotta be worth SOME mod. points
That's not funny, my brother died that way!
And I'm posting because there is no "Moron" mod.
/. Every post is either repeating something from the article, making a pedantic loser comment on the "140 years" line, or explaining to the morons the whole concept of "Frame of Reference."
This is seriously one of the stupidest discussions I've ever seen on
It's what I'd expect from a society where people prank call a scientific conference. Nice one, guys.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
28,000 light years away equates rougly to 164.6 quadrillion miles. While I'm certain that the scientists are using their very best methodologies and calculations, isn't attempting to measure the age of a supernova that far away down to the year it occurred analogous to attempting to sex a fruit fly perched on a rock in the Sea of Tranquility?
A star 26,000 LY from Earth goes supernova and it's light could have been seen on Earth 140 years ago.
No one on Earth 'saw' it then because it was too far away and buried in the center of the Milky Way, so there is no record of the supernova.
Most supernovae display common characteristics in their light curve and the type of nebula they leave behind.
Astronomers using the CXO were able to image the object, determine it's size and distance, the relative velocity of the nebula's expansion,
and make a determination as to the 'date' the explosion occurred. Just from the remains of the explosion, the nebula.
As a comparison, the the supernova that was responsible for the Crab Nebula was observed in 1054 AD by the Chinese.
The Crab Nebula itself was not seen until 1731.
Sig this!
Wake me when they've discovered how Everything evolved from Nothing.
No, no, everything exploded from Nothing. Get it right. Sheesh.</quote><br>Well first a daddy universe explodes into a momma universe and new life is formed. 9 billion years later that little universe thinks it is the center of everything.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
The parent's parent is an idiot
Looks like the firefox logo. Nice!
-- Simon said: Die!
First posted August 1868:
Natural philosophers studying the heavens have spotted a stellar nova some 7000 light leagues distance. The light from this exploding star emanated some 24000 years before the birth of Our Lord. This has caused some confusion among scholars, as this would require the star to have combusted some 20 millennia before the creation of the Universe. Philosophers are also unable to theorize what may have made the star explode, though one possibility is a build-up of gas deep within the star's anthracite core.
This is certainly the biggest bang since Mr. Wilkes' curtain call during "Our American Cousin".
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
"The discovery addresses a lack of recent supernova in our galaxy."
This makes it sound like the galaxy's going to suffer incontinence or flaking nebulae if it doesn't get enough supernovae.
(disclaimer: this is a joke, I know what he means. I shouldn't have to add this, but this is slashdot)
So if you run that through the Gore-gonator, it becomes: "The birth of America caused a solar system to explode. We are killing the Universe. Everyone must stop driving SUV's (except me)."
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Haven't you seen the documents the BBC is covering on UFOs and Aliens in the UK?
...
That's why you aren't finding aliens there
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Gosh that looks like the firefox logo... now i can copy the firefox logo and claim prior art hahahahhahaa
If it's 28,000 light years away then how can it only be 140 years old?
Before you mark this 'redundant' let me just point out that I was actually first to ask this question... relative to Earth's time frame.
This will, of course, become a standard caveat that people throw into conversation.
"No officer, I was only doing 55mph... relative to Earth's time frame."
(Very old woman in short dress at bar):"Me sonny? I'm only 32 years old... relative to Earth's time frame."
As has already been pointed out, the light from the supernova got here 140 years ago. This obviously means that it exploded 26000+140 years ago, not 140 years ago. But leaving that aside...
It's certainly possible, in theory, to know that something has happened in a far-off place before the light actually gets to us. Imagine that you train your telescope on an object which is 26,000 light years away. The object is a bomb, with a digital countdown which ticks once per year. Suppose that the display reads 25860. From this, you can deduce that the bomb must have exploded 140 years ago, even though the light from that explosion will not arrive for another 25860 years.
The write-up says:
If we are observing it (the light, that left the start 28000 years ago) now, the start must be about 28140 years old...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Have you seen the picture of the supernova from the Chandra press room website? The first picture, top left looks like the Firefox logo.
28,140 years old then, eh?
We are the 198 proof..
Now every time I read a /. headline, I'm going to be adding "But No Aliens" to it in my head. *sigh*
I used to think in supernovas like in a sun exploding, and as it, that last relatively little time. Being a process that last at least 140 years is something new for me.
Much much easier solution than that. Nothing is bigger than the Universe, by definition. The Universe is everything, also by definition. It follows that everything is a subset of all that is nothing, since nothing is the bigger of the two, as already stated. This would mean that it is nothing that has evolved and that, relative to nothing, everything has remained the same. In next week's lecture, I will be explaining how black is white and demonstrate how this leads to a high mortality rate on zebra crossings.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Just a supernova? I had hoped that NASA had discovered the region of the universe where the mates for all the unmatched socks coming out of the dryer had gone.
Nothingness can't exist. If it existed it would be something.
With so many discovery's in our own solar system, NASA has to continue to step on it's dick and announce something that 99.999% of our population will say B-O-R-I-N-G! I don't call a supernova 28k/ly away a "MAJOR" discovery. What about the ruins on the moon or Mars? I think that would fall into what NASA has been searching for the last 50+ years. You would think the powers that have been keeping us in the dark ages for so long would finally conclude that "it's time" for a real disclosure / discovery.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Chris Hanson of Dateline NBC setup a sting for these astronomers and caught them in the act of trying to view young supernova's. Of course, Chris Hanson's first remark was "What are you doing here? You know these supernova's are underage."
Most Astronomers were quoted as saying:
"I was just trying to make friends. Nothing was going to happen. I wanted to teach them that there are bad people out there and they have to watch out."
Yes, I know the post is intended as a joke, and that some of the extrapolations done back then seem insane today, but I could easily see people back then actually writing such a letter (based on the science texts I've read from that time). Not all, some would likely have come up with more reasonable explanations - at least as close as the knowledge of the time permitted, but certainly the people of the time would have regarded such a post as a seriously proposed theory.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Well, zero exists! Besides, if nothing is bigger than everything, and everything is more than something, then something is always less than nothing. Thus, the universe is in fact negative. (You can test this theory by reading the newspaper.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Fortunately she then called up a competitor to ask for a comment and repeated her version of what I told her. He then responded, 'I really don't think thats what PHB said'. The story died there.
You try but sometimes the journalist tries harder than they are able to.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Complete audio of the conference
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7SSH9YJD
Moon Cricket call
http://www.speedyshare.com/269485286.html
Vagina/China call
http://www.speedyshare.com/306644284.html
Slashdot headlines in fortune cookie can therefore be even funnier.
"If I were to ask you a hypothetical question, what would you like it to be about?"
You know, I used to ask "why is there something rather than nothing?" but then I thought "why should there be nothing rather than something?"
Grr! Arg!
well, that we know of anyway, right?
It done blowed up 140 years ago.
It 'sploded 28140 years ago.
From the perspective of the Earth, the supernova occurred 140 years ago.
The light of this supernova first reached the Earth 140 years ago.
No, really, remember your quantum mechanics... on the Earth it really did only happen 140 years ago. Before we observed this event, the star was in a superposition of exploded and non-exploded states.
There's no reference frame in which it's possible to say when it happened, but from our psuedo-reference frame either 140 years or 28140 years are plausible answers.
Simultaneity to within 28000 years is a meaningless concept for objects 28000 light years apart. The best we can say is that the supernova occurred roughly between 140 and 28140 years ago.
We are now seeing the image of a 140 year-old supernova, the youngest such image we've seen.
I could go on, but even I have limits in pedantry.
Youngest Sun Spot Found, But No Aliens
Is it me or does the composite image look just like the firefox logo?
At least they don't have to apologize for it...
Some particles just shouldn't be accelerated
In Soviet Russia a beowulf cluster of these things imagines you welcoming your new, neural-network overlords.
Uhhhh... wouldn't that be 28,140 years old, being as the light from a 140 year old supernova has traveled through space for 28,000 years to the point where Earthling Astronomers are observing it?
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2008/g19/g19.jpg (chandra.harvard.edu)
Do I sense a Mozilla scheme?
Yes, zero exists, but it is not a number!
Look it up; zero is a placeholder (in a column) for no sum.
So in a sense, zero DOESN'T exist (as a number) but yes its glyph exists so we can note its absence (from a column). The romans didn't use a zero, they left the column blank.
*Some Arabian mathematician explaining this to his peers a few thousand years ago: "I love it when a plan comes together"
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Um?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Surely, if its 28,000 light years away and only 140 years old, we won't see it (or be aware of it in any way what so ever) for another 27,860 years!?!
>/dev/null 2>&1
I am rather less interested in Roman accounting tallies than I am in differential calculus, group theory and chaos theory. Besides which, would you rather trust Arabs or Alex the Parrot?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)