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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."
Exactly! NASA obviously needs to do a better job of keeping the lense clean. :-P
Joking aside (at least I HOPE I'm joking!), I have to wonder if this wasn't a large matter/antimatter event. Given that the "object" was described as suddenly appearing, increasing in brightness, then falling off until it disappeared.
Current physics, to my understanding, postulate that the universe had to have consisted of 50/50 matter and antimatter at the beginning. One of the current puzzles the LHC is trying to solve is, what happened to all the antimatter?
Since this is open space, it stands to reason that clouds of matter and antimatter may still be floating around, undisturbed. If the two attracted each other over a cosmically long period, we may be seeing the resulting fireworks.
That's my best guess, anyway.
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I clicked on here hoping someone with an astrophysics or cosmology background might be able to have a stab and guessing what this thing might be, or have something interesting to say about Hubble.
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A Matrioshka Brain decloaking (tilting the orbiting computronium so it is parallel to the direction of star-to-earth line of sight rather then perpendicular) would fit the bill. But if it has disappeared again they need to go looking for it with their best IR telescopes and I suspect the observing time committees aren't going to be in a rush to approve time to look for a Matrioshka Brain. :-(
Physicists, and to a lesser extent astronomers, have a real problem starting with the assumption that the universe may be populated by species which have evolved there technology and intelligence to the limits allowed by physical laws...
Couldn't it be a new star forming? I don't think we've ever witnessed a star being born before, so its early days as it starts fusion and begins emitting light could look like nothing we've ever seen before. It might wink on and off like a baby taking its first steps.Just a college student's guess.
Since there are now about 100 idiotic "joke" comments on this thread, perhaps I can put in a serious note. Hubble finding something presently unidentifiable is fantastic. One of the best things you can hear in scientific circles is something along the lines of "What the hell is that?"
Similar to the upcoming US election results
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh-My-God_Particle
There was a satellite (called Kepler) that could measure parallax out to about that far, but it takes too long. The baseline it used between the two angle measurements was 300 million kilometers--the diameter of Earth's orbit. It got that baseline by simply waiting six months! This thing wasn't there long enough. (Even if Kepler were still operational.)
Except that the source couldn't have been more than 11 billion light years away (No distortion from intergalactic hydrogen) and the particle horizon is 13.6-13.9 billion light years away. Plus the fact that it faded away after about 100 days would seem to indicate it was some kind of event, not just an object.
OK, so an object in the sky got brighter and brighter for 100 days and there was not one news report on it? Isn't that the kind of thing you'd hope to see reported?
This does not give me much faith that they'd tell us if a giant planet killing comet were headed right for us.
Don't laugh... OK, so I don't remember a lot of space physics from 35 years ago (been that long too) and I am not a star watcher either, but I do seem to remember something about gravitational lenses and the bending/focusing of light from large bodies in space and astronomers having to make adjustments accordingly.
What if there is another type that we haven't considered that will focus another object into a place that can only be observed under very special circumstances? Just a thought, I'll let you space-geeks argue now.
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I'm shocked that it took this many posts for a reasonable response to pop up. Yowza. Slashdot is losing its touch.
You're right, it appears that the energy peaked in the infrared spectrum. Which is not at all consistent with antimatter annihilation.
My next best guess would be a failed star birth. If there was enough hydrogen collecting to ignite, but nothing that lit it from where we could see, the star would appear to simply come into existence. Of course, that raises all kinds of questions about how a star could ignite without sufficient fuel to sustain it. Unless the trigger was some other event. e.g. If we poured enough energy into Jupiter (say, terrawatt lasers), would it be possible to briefly ignite the gas giant?
Hmm... it's tough to come up with ideas without venturing out into the land of "maybes". Which is all idle speculation unless one is willing to test the theory in some manner. (Either crunch the numbers or run an experiment to determine the viability of such concepts.)
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How insightful can a comment be when even the NASA astronomers don't know what it is? It's a post of ignorance, i.e. there's nothing more to be said unless someone has more data.
When the experts have no clue that's when they need a shot of imagination from some laymen -- enough crazy hairbrained ideas and something might stick.
Personally, I think it's a dyson sphere composed of satellites that is set to 'shutter' over a long period (by rotating flat sattelites to allow light to pass). It's probably counting primes from 1 to 101 over the course of a few years by blinking on/off.
Think about it, if you want to get the attention of very distant aliens you need massive power of a sun, and you need a signal that changes gradually so that aliens studying that particular star see the change if actively studying it, or that see the change over a long time when doing sweeps of the area (present in this image, but not in the images a year later, etc). Tweak the spectrum using the material of your dyson sphere itself to add interest by making it not look like anything else.
The gist of the plot is that a strange interstellar event happens at the same time they start the LHC, with some interesting consecuences. The timing gives me the creeps ;)
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