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X-Ray Burst Temporarily Blinds NASA Satellite
RedEaredSlider writes with news that a recently-detected gamma-ray burst, originating roughly five billion light-years away, was powerful enough to temporarily blind NASA's Swift satellite. Phil Plait has an interesting writeup on the event. Quoting:
"Swift, normally easily able to handle the X-ray load from these explosions, was overwhelmed, and actually shut down temporarily when software detected that the cameras onboard might get damaged by the flood of light. That’s never happened before. The burst was so bright in X-rays it put other GRBs to shame: slamming Swift with 143,000 X-ray photons per second, it was 5 times brighter than the previous record holder, and nearly 200 times as bright as a typical GRB! Weirdly, it didn’t look out of the ordinary in visible light."
In a tragedy reported today, Superman was looking at the sky during the GRB event and was blinded due to his X-ray vision. Reports say that he is now training with a seeing-eye falcon.
Help me fix my brother's injured butt!
...for this LHC to achieve such respectable levels of efficiency.
One that hath name thou can not otter
She Blinded Me With Science. Did you know Thomas Dolby is touring again, btw?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Only fired off one Halo
Wherever You Go, There You Are
"Ha, ha, made you blink!"
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
or whatever scares most people at the current time.
Dick Cheney?
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Some....where.....out there....at a glowing terminal in a galaxy far far away....
Pinging eth0.sol.andromeda.alphaquadrant.gxy [10.197.19.1] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 10.197.19.1: bytes=32 time1ms TTL=127
Request timed out
Reply from 10.197.19.1: bytes=32 time1ms TTL=127
Reply from 10.197.19.1: bytes=32 time1ms TTL=127
Ping statistics for 10.197.19.1:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 3, Lost = 1 (25% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Cheney is soooooo last presidency.
Collector's Edition
"That is not dead which can eternal lie"
You get this video about actual observations of intercelestial bodies manipulating the sun with what are termed lasers, and then there are passes from what is deemed "wormhole" technology that arrives near the sun from a trailable distance that could be seen as perhaps millions of lightyears away because it can be visually traced.
Then of'course there is the meteor over 4-times larger than Planet Jupiter, and NASA doesn't report any of this.
Yay homebrew and independent astronomers!