New Map From Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "NASA has received interesting results from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, originally known as GLAST, which has allowed them to create new map of the gamma-ray sky. The secret to its ability to resolve gamma-rays is that they use layers of tungsten interleaved with silicon detectors. When a gamma-ray strikes tungsten, it produces an electron/positron pair due to the photoelectric effect, which cascades as it goes through further layers of tungsten. Meanwhile, they record which silicon detectors had electrons or positrons pass through them to determine the direction of the source and they also record the total energy of the electron/positron pairs to calculate the wavelength of the gamma-ray using Planck's Law. The data gathered in just its first few hours of operation is reportedly comparable to the data from the Energetic Gamma-Ray Experiment Telescope, which gathered data for nine years back in the 1990's and there are hopes that it could detect dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs)."

Comments

I can answer that!

[Anonymous Coward]

> I'd just like to point out that I Don't Believe In Imaginary Property is more prolific now than Roland was in his prime, yet there's no griping. I wonder why...

Not really. For one, look at the Hall of Fame. Rpiquepa is #2 with 455 submissions. Yes, that's Roland's account.

Secondly, there have been many threads with random curiosity/griping. Mostly they stopped caring once they found out that I'm a nobody who does this for fun, but I guess my name gets a lot more attention than prostoalex (the #1 submitter of all time), or most of the rest of the top 10 (except maybe for Mr. Beckerman who has a personal hand in many of his stories).

I'm probably the only submitter who submits this much without using their Slashdot account (I have max karma, I don't really care). I think that also accounts for a lot of the attention.

I don't have any relation to any of the Slashdot editors, though, if that was your implication. I don't know if you've noticed, but they'll write submissions under their own name from time to time. They don't need to invent someone to submit via :-)

I'm also not affiliated with the EFF except that I support their goals. That said, I encourage people to take up the name if they support the goals I do. Feel free to submit to Slashdot under my name. You probably won't make any goofs worse than I have. I spent about an hour trying to figure out what caused the electron/positron pair production only to get it wrong, even though I don't get a thing for doing this.

But I figure I'm staying true to my principles if I don't even lay claim to my own name. It's not like I own it or something :-)

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

What I'd like to know

[techno-vampire]

There was one thing TFA didn't make clear to me: what does this tell us about man-in-the-moon marigolds?