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Hubble Finds Unidentified Object In Space
Gizmodo is reporting that the Hubble space telescope has found a new unidentified object in the middle of nowhere. Some are even suggesting that this could be a new class of object. Of course, without actually understanding more about it, the speculation seems a bit wild. "The object also appeared out of nowhere. It just wasn't there before. In fact, they don't even know where it is exactly located because it didn't behave like anything they know. Apparently, it can't be closer than 130 light-years but it can be as far as 11 billion light-years away. It's not in any known galaxy either. And they have ruled out a supernova too. It's something that they have never encountered before. In other words: they don't have a single clue about where or what the heck this thing is."
Well, it was observed with multiple telescopes, so it's not an artifact. The full paper can be found here: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0809/0809.1648v1.pdf
yes, yes it was
"The bowl of petunias was created during one occurrence when the Heart of Gold's Infinite Improbability Drive was activated. It appeared in mid-air, and promptly fell to the ground and shattered.
Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that, we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now. "
http://www.hhgttgonline.com/html/petunias.html
"The whale has only one scene in the TV show and movie, but nevertheless he tries to make productive use of his limited time to attempt to come to terms with his existence, naming things that he discovers along the way, such as his tail and the wind whipping past him very rapidly as he approaches the large thing coming towards him very quickly that he names "ground", and wonders to himself whether or not it would like to be his friend."
http://www.hhgttgonline.com/html/whale.html
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore."
The Sky and Telescope article is much better than the Gizmodo blog. The article explains why it can't be closer than 130 ly due to no parallax, though IDK why they didn't use a more sensitive satellite for measuring parallax of objects up to 1600 ly away. Maybe it was only seen after the fact, or the other satellite was not sensitive enough? The thing could not be farther than 11 billion ly either, since otherwise the light would be distorted as it passed through interstellar hydrogen clouds (i.e. "cosmic hydrogen absorption in its spectrum"). The Sky and Telescope article even includes a reference to the original paper describing the phenomenon. I suggest you read that article instead. It is much more interesting!
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
Is this blog post for real, or is it just a way to grab some traffic and ad revenue?
I can't find a likely looking original article on the astro-ph preprint server, nor on the Astrophysics Journal site [subscription required?]. Furthermore, the researchers who made this alleged disocovery aren't credited or even mentioned in the blog post, so there's no names to Google for ("hubble AND unknown" only comes up with the original article). Does anyone know the original source, or this just some blogger's idea of a joke?
-JS
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity...
You can change your preferences to change how various moderations affect the score. If you are annoyed by funny posts, change the funny moderation to be a -1 instead of a +1.
This object supposedly faded into existence over 100 days or so, and then took just as long to fade. I'm curious to know what frequency was the most intense during this time.
Did we observe anything with our other space telescopes? Gamma ray burst?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray_burst_progenitors
There are astronomical phenomena we've theorised to exist, but so far have had little if any observations of such. Take this little beauty:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark-nova
Okay, so our astrophysicists are throwing that one out there. Perhaps we have seen a few - SN2006gy, SN2005gj, SN2005ap - but maybe we're kidding ourselves, and this is the Real Thing.
What do we call it when a quasar effectively goes supernova? (Not hypernova, that is reserved for very large stars.) Could a quasar even do this?
Perhaps what we've witnessed is the formation - or destruction - of a truly exotic object. And no, we don't have to resort to Dark Matter.
Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnnn!
Tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
It's a common misconception that the Hubble has a lens. But, like all large telescopes, it has a curved mirror instead.
When your optics are focused at 11tybillion miles, lens artifacts are not visible/in focus. Even if they were, they do not self-illuminate.
I do wish the Funny mod wouldn't make so many posts appear so prominently on a thread.
If that ever changed, I'd stop reading it. I already get all the dry tech news I need, but come to Slashdot for the twisted geek view on things. A huge part of that is a shared sense of humor, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Think of Slashdot as a bar you go to after work. Sure, you'll hear some serious conversations, but you'll hear a lot more people telling jokes and enjoying themselves away from the office.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
And a parsec is a measure of distance.
My thought (admittedly based on other folks on the 'net) is that the kessel run is a race from one point on the surface of the volume of Kessel, to another point on the far end of the volume.
The fact that you can do it in a particularly small number of parsecs suggests that you are getting really close to the even horizon of a black hole at the center of Kessel.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
IANAP, but my understanding is that the spectra emitted by matter/antimatter annihilation is fairly well-understood, and that most of the energy is carried in very high frequencies, like gamma rays.
Meanwhile, if you scan through the paper itself (arXiv link is downthread), they discuss spectra and absorption bands that are roughly similar to other stellar events in overall energy profile; a lot of it was in the visible spectrum.
My admittedly very poor understanding is that an M/AM event would look roughly like a gamma-ray burst, whereas this looked a lot more like a nova, albeit a very unusual one that didn't match any known profile.
The authors' best suggestion was a stellar merger event of unknown type.
Corrections from people who know astrophysics better than I would be quite appreciated...
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
after work?
The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something; for the box might even be empty.
Those who didn't get it - Ian M. Banks has a set of novels set in the 'Culture' universe. There was one called 'Excession'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excession
blog plug -> The Darker Side of Light
*dorkhat*
Ding ding, the post-original movies explanation was that the run to kessel involves passing a cluster of supermassive blackholes where the goal to avoid detection as a smuggler was to trim the trip as close to the event horizon as possible without falling past the horizon.
The closer to the event horizon you go, the faster you need to be going to get out again, which requires a higher maximum velocity. Doing so in 12 parsecs is apparently a good indication of a fast ship.
*dorkhat off*
Here's a link to another, slightly more serious article, which also links the paper itself.
Kessel is actually a planet where "glitterstim" (an heavily controlled drug with mind-enhancing powers) is mined. The Kessel Run is a smuggling route from Kessel back to the standard trade routes. The direct path leads through the Maw, a deadly cluster of black holes; all but the most suicidal or desperate keep their distance.
The rest is much as you described -- once, while being chased by Imperial ships, Han takes the Falcon through the Maw to escape. Much to his surprise, he discovers that not only did he make the trip in record time, but in record distance as well -- less than twelve parsecs -- due to proximity to the black holes.
Basics about Kessel, the Kessel Run, and the surrounding region of space can be found in The Han Solo Trilogy, Book #2, "The Hutt Gambit". The record-setting run itself occurs in Book #3 of the same series, "Rebel Dawn".
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
It has a lens now. Although not originally. NASA had to add a lens element to correct for the mirror aberration.
It doesn't have an objective lens, but it has internal lenses and optics, and the "retrofit" inserted an additional corrective lens to compensate for improperly preparing the main mirror.
The paper already discusses why a microlensing event (that's the name for what you describe) is an unlikely explanation. (You should probably pat yourself on the back for a good try though.)
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
This is probably ruled out for two reasons. First, there's no detectable nebula in the area. Stars usually form out of dust or plasma clouds. The brightness magnitude at its max suggests that its near our galaxy if its a star, meaning its mother nebula should be detectable if it had one.
Second the spectrum does not match any known object, according to the Sky and Telescope article somebody linked to. They've studied birthing stars such as those in Orion, so the spectrum of such would be an approximate match.
Table-ized A.I.
You're right, it appears that the energy peaked in the infrared spectrum. Which is not at all consistent with antimatter annihilation.
This is actually not accurate. The article contains a spectrograph from 4000 to 10000 angstroms. It does not contain any shorter wavelengths. The way you find an object's redshift is by matching known absorption/emission lines with the object's emission lines. The offset is the redshift. As the article points out, there's no obvious match to the few narrow lines, thus, we don't know what the redshift is. For some reason (possibly because the object was too faint), they did not observe in the UV or X-ray ranges, which would've been helpful for higher energy events, especially if it was galactic.
This post should have been moderated insightful, not interesting.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
wrong. The Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR) package contained only mirrors not lenses that corrected Hubble's vision.
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