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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.
This is just in! A first alien message! It's estimated to be 500,000 light years away and even more radio year.
After years of crunching our most heavy quantum computers, we decoded;
"HELP. WE ARE THE LAST KNOWN SURVIVING SPECIES IN THIS UNIVERSE. HELP. THEY FINALLY HAVE CREATED WEAPONS OF MASS... - NO CARRIER.".
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
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.
People need to read about relativity of simultaneity before trying to be smart asses and making laymen comments about events at large distances.