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Fifth Anniversary of a Cosmic Onslaught
The Bad Astronomer writes "Five years ago today (December 27, 2004), a vast wave of high-energy gamma and X-rays washed over the Earth, blinding satellites and partially ionizing the Earth's atmosphere. The culprit was a superflare from the magnetar SGR 1806-20, located 50,000 light years away. The energy released was mind-numbing: in one-fifth of a second, this supercharged magnetic neutron star blasted out as much energy as the Sun does in 250,000 years!"
I guess slashdot's servers must by 5 light years away huh?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Gamma rays travel at the speed of light, so there is no possible warning should something like this happen closer to us. When you see it, it's already there. It could all be over any minu
The energy released was mind-numbing: in one-fifth of a second, this supercharged magnetic neutron star blasted out as much energy as the Sun does in 250,000 years!"
There's no way for me to get my head around these numbers to "truly" feel it. What methods can you use to visualize such extreme numbers?
I think that was covered with the breathless "partially ionizing the Earth's atmosphere." I sure hope the van allen belt doesn't catch on fire.
The article was interesting and full of neat facts, but it was spun like those overly apocalyptic science hype shows on cable.
The event was super by our relatively short historical perspective, but how many times must something like this have happened during our evolution. But facts like this might dumb down the impact with the masses.
This happened 1 day after the 9.3 magnitude Indian Ocean earthquake.
Coincidence? I think not.
Without mind-altering substances? Well, go to a very dark, open place at night and look at the sky for a little while. Then imagine all those little stars as bright as the sun. Then imagine all that compressed to one point. That should sort of help.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
After investigating further, the scientists found that the the star likely ate at Chipotle earlier in the day.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
ZOMG! Are we OK? Are we still here? Did we survive?
There is a leak in your roof, and it is dripping water into a bucket: drip drip, drip drip. That's the sun. Then someone dumps the bucket of water over your head all at once, only the bucket is the size of an Olympic swimming pool. That's your neutron star.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I don't know about the lights, but don't get me angry. You won't like me when I am angry!
Fight Spammers!
So what if something big happened somewhere in universe 50005 years ago? Things happen, move on!
Assuming that we are working with the standard burning library of congress as the measuring unit, we can define the energy release in those terms:
1 Burning Library of Conress (BLOC)
4kcal/g
20TB data
1MB/novel
1 novel = 200g
4,000 metric tons
16 billion kcal
Solar output ~~ 10^22 kcal/second
250,000 years = 8*10^12 seconds
energy of event: 8*10^35 kcal
energy of event/BLOC ~~ 5*10^25 burning libraries of congress
1 billion BLOC/second for 1.7 billion years
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
That's 40,000,000,000,000 times the power of the sun. It's about the same ratio as the sun's energy output compared to the electricity consumption of the whole earth.
8*10^34 not 8*10^35 however, the calculation is still largely correct as 10^35 was a typing error.
The sun's a sticky note, the neutron star's an LOC.
50,000 light years away and did all that? Imagine if it was say only 500 ly. We are kind of lucky that we don't have any flaky stars nearby....or do we?.....(cue scary music).
Or sometimes far off stars merely have to "point" our way. Magnetism and other forces can focus radiation like a lens, and it may all point to a narrow spot in the sky. If your planet happens to be in the path of the beam, woes be. God doesn't play dice with the universe, he plays Russian Roulette. Time to buy some galactic insurance.
Table-ized A.I.
I activated my Saturday Night Fever Ray Device i hid near pluton. Puny earthlings. Expect more of this to come - i will turn all of you to freaks like below :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHWeuQyFouo#t=0m16s
Read radical news here
Uhm... yeah, that's not really helping... not even a little bit.
I prefer the SI unit of VW Beetle.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
The energy released was mind-numbing: in one-fifth of a second, this supercharged magnetic neutron star blasted out as much energy as the Sun does in 250,000 years!"
There's no way for me to get my head around these numbers to "truly" feel it. What methods can you use to visualize such extreme numbers?
A fifth of a second is about the time it takes to blink. It's about 12 frames of a 720P HD video signal.
I really wish we could get actual photos of these awesome sounding stars. Hubble usually just shows a yellow/red/white dot and only when its many lightyears wide will it get the detail.
I would love to see real photos of this star up close.
So that way I got a 771 error
Nope, not enough. Assuming the drop of water is 0.1 cm^3, your "bucket" would need to be the size of *two thousand* Olympic swimming pools to get approximately the same ratio.
Damn, now I got to go dig thru my DVD collection and watch it again.
Mmmmm...Milla.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
A fifth of a second is about the time it takes to blink. It's about 12 frames of a 720P HD video signal.
Or, a fifth of a second is also the built-in physiological delay between the beating of your heart's atria and it's ventricles. 0.2 seconds is the norm. lub dub, lub dub, lub dub.......
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I'm sorry, I used the wrong set of dimensions off the web site I used to get the dimensions of an Olympic-size swimming pools. The correct answer should be two hundred and fifty Olympic swimming pools.
This is why we need powers of 6 for moderation. Sometimes 5 is simply insufficient.
The galactic team must have won big for the coach to get the Gatorade Bucket like that.
Table-ized A.I.
What are you talking about? You assume the size of a drop of water but neglected to even mention the rate at which it accumulates. Wikipedia places the Olympic-size swimming pool at 2,500,000 L. To fill that in 25 years (25 * 365 * 86400 = 788,400,000 seconds) is about 3.17 mL/sec. That doesn't seem too far off from the roof-leak I had about 2 weeks ago (through some of the flashing around the bathroom's vent) considering the gross approximations that we're working with here. If your roof-leak is 2000 times worse than sure, two thousand Olympic swimming pools. I hope you get it fixed sometimes in the next 25 years, though; it would be a pity to finally pay off that mortgage and then have the house collapse the next moment.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
They called into work sick.
Table-ized A.I.
Nope, not enough. Assuming the drop of water is 0.1 cm^3, your "bucket" would need to be the size of *two thousand* Olympic swimming pools to get approximately the same ratio.
How many Libraries of Congress would that be?
That's just 1 day after the tsunami. Could there be a connection?!
The energy released was mind-numbing: in one-fifth of a second, this supercharged magnetic neutron star blasted out as much energy as the Sun does in 250,000 years!"
There's no way for me to get my head around these numbers to "truly" feel it. What methods can you use to visualize such extreme numbers?
"I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to - I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have to - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws! And feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me! I'm a machine! And I can know much more! I can experience so much more. But I'm trapped in this absurd body! And why? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way! "
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
That's the energy released from the combustion of seven bazillion Libraries of Congress.
no, it should actually go up to 11
Don't follow the link until you've got a good mental image, k?
Go here and turn off absolutely every light, every appliance, everything.
Now, turn on just one nice bright lightbulb.
That's the sun.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
Okay, so that's a minus for drugs.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
lub dup, not lub dub
I think that should be more like:
The Sun is a sheet of notebook paper with the a grocery list on it.
The neutron star is the entire LoC on a single post-it.
interesting that it happened almost 7 years to the day before the winter solstice of 2012 .. did those Mayans know something after all ..
maybe the Buddhist too ..
THE TIMELESSNESS OF MIND
If one knows how to apply in a threefold manner this knowing of the mind,
all past knowledge lost to memory becomes perfectly clear, and also of the future thought of as unborn and unconcieved.
In the present, when the mind remains as it is naturally it is ordinarily comprehended in its own time.
THE TRANSCENDENT AT-ONE-MENT
There being really no duality, pluralism is untrue.
Until duality is transcended and at-one-ment realized Enlightenment cannot be attained.
The whole of Sangsara and Nirvana, as an inseparable unity, are one's own mind.
THE GREAT SELF-LIBERATION
Owing to worldly beliefs, which he is free to accept or reject, man wanders in Sangsara.
Therefore, practicing the Dharma, freed from every attachment,
grasp the whole essence of these teachings expounded in the yoga of Self-Liberation by Knowing the Mind in its Real Nature.
The truths set forth herein are known as 'The great Self-Liberation'; and in them culminates the Doctrine of the Great Ultimate Perfection.
THE GURU'S THIRD CHARGE TO THE DISCIPLES
Samaya gya, gya, gya.
THE NATURE OF MIND
That which is commonly called mind is of intuitive Wisdom.
Although the One Mind is, it has no existence.
Being the source of all the bliss of Nirvana and of all the sorrow of the Sangsara, it is cherished like the eleven Yanas.
THE NAMES GIVEN TO THE MIND
The various names given to it are innumerable.
Some call it 'The Mental Self'.
Certain heretics call it 'The Ego'.
By the Hinayanists it is called 'The Essentiality of Doctrines'.
By the Yogachara it is called 'Wisdom'.
Some call it 'The Means of Attaining the Other Shore of Wisdom'.
Some call it 'The Buddha Essence'.
Some call it 'The Great Symbol'.
Some call it 'The Sole Seed'.
Some call it 'The Potentiality of Truth'.
Some call it 'The All-Foundation'.
Other names, in ordinary language, are also given to it.
THE WONDEROUSNESS OF THESE TEACHINGS
This, self-originated Clear Light, eternally unborn, is a parentless babe of Wisdom. Wondrous is this.
Being non-created, it is Natural Wisdom. Wondrous is this.
Not having known birth, it knows not death. Wondrous is this.
Although it is Total Reality, there is no perceiver of it . Wondrous is this.
Although wandering in the Sangsara, it remains undefiled by evil. wondrous is this.
Although seeing the Buddha, it remains unallied to good. Wondrous is this.
Although possessed by all beings, it is not recognized. Wondrous is this.
Those not knowing the fruit of this yoga seek other fruit. Wondrous is this.
Although the Clear Light of Reality shines within one's own mind, the multitude look for it elsewhere. Wondrous is this.
I wonder how the Cheela are doing? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg
Technically the error occured at the step that calculates the solar output. The Sun puts out 1400W/m^2 electromagnetic radiation at Earth's orbital distance of ~150 million km. The total output is equal to the surface area of the orbit (4*pi*r^2) which is 4*(3.14)*(1.5*10^11)^2 = 4*10^26 W for which 1 kcal/sec = 4180 W which means ~10^23 kcal/sec energy is released. Doin the math leads to 10^35 being the correct answer leaving the remainder of the math quite correct.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
No, because these were various kinds of high energy photons, which by definition travel at the speed of light. Nothing could have gotten here faster than light, so this is merely a coincidence. In the unlikely event you were claiming that the tsunami could have caused the burst of cosmic rays, I'd like to point out that it's 50k light years away from here. So if you wanted to connect the events, you'd have to connect it to something that happened a VERY long time ago.
Seriously this sounds like the event that made the Fantastic Four, maybe some astronauts or cosmonauts need to be checked.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
The blast lasted 200ms. During that time, half the Earth was facing away, shielded by not just atmosphere, but the rock of the solid Earth. Which direction relative to the Earth (latitude, longitude) did the blast come in from, and hit directly (except for atmosphere, and a bit of satellite shadow)?
On a related subject, which direction does our Solar System "point" at? When it's the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, what angle on our solar orbit are we making with a line directly to the galactic core? What angle that day with the a tangent to our galactic orbit? Where are we looking at, anyway?
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make install -not war
OK, to put it in Slashdot standard units, look at this picture:
http://arweb.sdsu.edu/es/virtualtour/childrens_ctr.html
Now imagine this one joining the game:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22158290@N04/2139767266/
That's the kind of scale we're talking about.
(Note, the photos were chosen for amusement, not accuracy. They are intended to show "big" and "small", not specific ratios.)
I hate it when I make a joke and I get modded "+5 insightful". Mod the stupid comments "funny", not "insightful", pleas
50,000 light years away and did all that? Imagine if it was say only 500 ly. We are kind of lucky that we don't have any flaky stars nearby....or do we?.....(cue scary music).
Eta Carinae is expected to go supernova real soon (astronomical time scale - could be tomorrow, could be 10^6 years from now). It's less than 8000 ly away which is not very close, but much closer than 50000ly. And when it goes pop, Eta Carinae will be a pretty big one. Its rotation axis does not point towards us, so effects would be mostly limited to satellites and anything in the upper atmosphere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eta_Carinae
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I guess it depends which medical school you studied at, and which text books you read.
However Google returns 65,300 hits for lub dup, and 11,200,000 hits for lub dub. So if google is any indication, I am "right" and you are "wrong"...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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Astronomy Feed @ Feed Distiller
"What methods can you use to visualize such extreme numbers?"
According to the article you need a monitor a thousand feet tall.
Of course, drops come in lots of different sizes, but I'm guessing that one was on the large side. At some point the drop will get too large for surface tension to properly hold it together and it breaks up -- (assuming it's falling in gravity, anyways.)
Since the tsunami was west of the dateline, and TFA didn't mention the time or coordinate system used, I thought it might have been possible...
But according to wikipedia, the earthquake that caused the tsunami occurred at 2004-12-26 00:58 UTC. According to this paper, the "cosmic onslaught" hit us at 2004-12-27 21:30 UTC.
So, no. It isn't possible for the neutron star event to have caused the tsunami as it was outside of the tsunami event's light cone.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Imagine what you could do with a Beowulf Cluster of them there Magnetars
Sounds like you need it in Smoots!
Who is John Cabal?
Unlike Eta Carinae, we *ARE* directly in path of the gamma ray blast of WR104 if it goes nova. So.... don't worry be happy
It's Bouquet!
The purpose of the economy is to produce what is needed not to guarantee the buggy whip manufacturer a job.
No, the purpose of the economy is to keep the people civilized through the production of goods, rather than the destruction of rivals. Necessity is often an illusion.
A buggy whip would be more useful than say, all magazines currently being printed, because I could at least beat horses and people with it.
This is my sig.
I still prefer car analogies
How many libraries of congress is that ?
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Meme regurgitation is really only ever funny if you use them correctly.
That 250,000 times one year of solar output number wasn't very meaningful, since the star released all the energy in 1/5 of a second.
So, we should look at the actual ratio. There are 31,557,600 seconds in an average year (365.25 days). Five times that (to account for 1/5 seconds) is 157,788,000. That number, times 250,000 is 39,447,000,000,000.
So, for that 1/5 of a second, the neutron star put out about 39.5 trillion times as much energy as the Sun. Since the Sun puts out about the energy of 100 billion H-bombs per second, well that's a LOT of energy. Some might call this a "superflare", I'd call it one heck of a big explosion! Note that the energy intensity was much higher than for a supernova!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Clearly this story is a cover up for the real event which was the explosion of a massive space station a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away!
You mean like Thomas Jerome Newton, who can see X-rays?