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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.
Maybe the implication is that an event that could cause such a burst should show up as out of the ordinary across the spectrum?
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.
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?
Last time I looked, "current" theory had GRBs coming from the poles, much like pulsars. This one just happened to be pointing (more or less) at us; we might not even be at the center of the beam.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
You got your wavelength wrong. As nobody uses wavelength for x-rays anyway (well almost nobody...),the straightforward way would be:
Number of photons * Energy of Photons.
The detector of Swift is sensitive from 15-150keV, so lets say a median energy of 50keV.
1eV=1.602*10^19J
->
143E3*1.602E-19*50E3= 1.15 nW
Now much, but consider: 1.15nW on each squre meter surface of a sphere with 5 billion lightyears radius...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Cheney is soooooo last presidency.
Collector's Edition
"That is not dead which can eternal lie"
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.
1.15 nW/m^2 * 4 * pi * (5E9 ly * 9.46E15 m/ly)^2 = 3.22E43 W
Do we know this wasn't somewhat directed?
The story is very sensationalist. All that happened is that the X-ray photons reached the detector faster than they could be recorded. Once the rate of photons slowed down the detector was fine again. This is a fairly normal occurrence for X-ray detectors. Roughly half of all of the gamma-ray bursts that Swift detects have X-ray emission higher than the XRT's coincidence limit.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
Plenty of extraordinarily distant GRBs have been observed already and no evidence has been found yet of variation of EM propagation speed across the spectrum over long distances.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Do we know this wasn't somewhat directed?
We assume that they are very directed... rather than assuming that 3.6 e26 grams of matter/antimatter are being annihilated every second (from a quick application of E=mc^2).
From Wikipedia's entry on Gamma Ray Bursts [emphasis added]:
Most observed GRBs are believed to be a narrow beam of intense radiation released during a supernova event, as a rapidly rotating, high-mass star collapses to form a black hole.
The other probable cause of GRB's, the merger or two neutron stars, would also rotate rapidly as the stars moved in more closely (conservation of angular momentum: think of a figure skater pulling in her arms). In both cases there exists a well-defined plane of rotation and emissions expelled along the axes.
>> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.