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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
I think there has been at least a dozen horror and apocalyptic films that have started with this exact event.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
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.
Maybe the implication is that an event that could cause such a burst should show up as out of the ordinary across the spectrum?
nm
(143,000, photons /second) x (h, Planck's constant in j-s) x (c, speed of light (in m/s)) / (avg wavelength of x-ray) = (6.63E-32)(3E8)(143,000)/(5E-9) = ~5.68E-10 J/S
Amirite?
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
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.
Why are aliens X-raying our satellites? I think Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones should be alerted.
while (true != false) process_more_stupid_code();
No, it's odd that the x-ray burst wasn't accompanied by other frequencies. But not that odd.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
..which planet?
We can probably blame the MIB (or those they police) for this latest development...
coding is life
... Doctor Bruce Banner stubbed his toe on a table leg, then declared to the journalists "HULK SMASH!" before smashing his way out through the brick wall.
Now what would be interesting is that somebody plug those number into a calculator, and assuming a perfect spherical repartition of the X ray photon, calculate the energy / intensity of the total photon emitted at the moment of the event, in 1 AU radius...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
You try to make the bird so light, and this is the price you will pay down the road.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Blinded by the light
revved up like a deuce
another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
revved up like a deuce
another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
revved up like a deuce
another runner in the night
Madman drummers bummers
Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat
In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat
With a boulder on my shoulder feelin kinda older
I tripped the merry-go-round
With this very unpleasin sneezin and wheezin
the calliope crashed to the ground
The calliope crashed to the ground
But she was
Blinded by the light
revved up like a deuce
runner in the night
Some silicone sister with a manager mister told me I go what it takes
She said "Ill turn you on sonny to something strong
play the song with the funky break"
And go-cart Mozart was checkin out the weather chart to see if it was safe outside
And little Early-Pearly came by in his curly-wurly and asked me if I needed a ride
Asked me if I needed a ride
But she was
Blinded by the light
revved up like a deuce
another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
She got down but she never got tired
Shes gonna make it through the night
Shes gonna make it through the night
But mama thats where the fun is
But mama thats where the fun is
Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun
But mama thats where the fun is
Some brimstone baritone anticyclone rolling stone preacher from the east
Says "Dethrone the dictaphone hit it in its funny bone
thats where they expect it least"
And some new-mown chaperone was standin in the corner
watching the young girls dance
And some fresh-sown moonstone was messin with his frozen zone reminding him of romance
The calliope crashed to the ground
But she was
Blinded by the light
revved up like a deuce
another runner in the night
Madman drummers bummers Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat
In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat
With a boulder on my shoulder feelin kinda older
I tripped the merry-go-round
With this very unpleasin sneezin and wheezin
the calliope crashed to the ground
Now Scott with a slingshot finially found a tender spot and throws his lover in the sand
And some bloodshot forget-me-not said daddys within earshot save the buckshot turn up the band
Some silicone sister with a manager mister told me I go what it takes
She said "Ill turn you on sonny to something strong"
Obviously, this was an attempt by the Chela at Optical SETI.
It's not their fault we have a different definition of "optical"....
www.eFax.com are spammers
If I'm doing my calculations correctly, I get a figure of ~1.436 x 10^57 photons per second coming from the source, assuming a fully spherical distribution...
GStreamer - The only way to stream!
Since it was an extraordinary x-ray discharge from a great distance with no other apparent discharges (radio, infrared, visible, etc), I have to wonder if continued observation will eventually yield those at a later time. If so, how would that be interpreted? (Not only regarding the cause/aftermath of the event itself, but also interference by interstellar materials and possible changes to em propagation.)
;)
I don't know much science, but I know enough to make science teachers nervous
It is not unusual for gamma-ray bursts to have X-ray afterglows, but no optical afterglows. About 95% of gamma-ray bursts have X-ray afterglows, but only about 60% have optical or infrared afterglows. The reason is that if there is a clump of dust between us and the gamma-ray burst the X-rays will go through, but the optical light will be scattered and never reach us.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
...to 10 billion years. Problem solved.
Glad it is just gamma rays, if it were in infrared or even visible light, somebody would probably blame the burst for the global temperature rise.
they are staring to play good base ball now.
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!
Weirdly, it didn’t look out of the ordinary in visible light.
I don't see how this is weird. The room didn't get any brighter when they bombarded my knee with x-rays when they were looking at my torn meniscus.
http://www.bynarystudio.com
My Optics! The goggles to nothing!
Turns out it was caused by the Death Star.
I wonder if the burst was close enough to LIGO for it to pick up a Gravity Wave? That's the theory anyway that gravity waves should be measurable in association with GRBs... But waves in the ocean travel much slower than the wind that creates them, so maybe there's a lag between the event and the actual measured wave.
Namaste
I am kind of impressed that the programmers anticipated excessive gamma rays and instituted measures to prevent damage. Your standard-issue security and digital cameras don't do that.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
Did i get it right? if i take the difference in distance into account naively, then the radioation itensity at the source was 10^12 times higher than the brightest source we see normally?
octave:13> 100*(5e9/50e3)^2
ans = 1.0000e+12
glad i am far away!
trying to build DMZs by blowing up star systems
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
If you had read the last line of TFS you would know that "Weirdly, it didn't look out of the ordinary in visible light" (incidentally, why they think it's weird that something that emits X-rays looks ordinary in visible light?)
It was only Superman's X-ray vision that was blinded, his ordinary vision is still super. Now MacGyver has agreed to help by improvising a pair of X-ray eyeglasses using a dentist's X-ray machine, two rubber bands, an Etch-a-Sketch, and a discarded box of Cheerios.