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Antarctic Experiment Finds Puzzling Distribution of Cosmic Rays
pitchpipe writes "A puzzling pattern in the cosmic rays bombarding Earth from space has been discovered by an experiment buried deep under the ice of Antarctica. ... It turns out these particles are not arriving uniformly from all directions. The new study detected an overabundance of cosmic rays coming from one part of the sky, and a lack of cosmic rays coming from another." The map of this uneven distribution comes from the IceCube neutrino observatory last mentioned several days ago.
Scientists have called this part of the sky "The Sun".
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
It would be great if they'd actually found the center of the universe, in contradiction to all previous theories, since that would allow a hole in relativity that you might be able to squeeze FTL through. At least as far as i understand it some methods of FTL would be non-paradoxical if there was actually a universal reference frame instead of everything being, well, relative.
Unfortunately i'm sure there's a much more mundane explanation for the phenomenon which they will eventually discover.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
God went that-a-way
Oh, I know what is going on. With all the earthquakes, floods, oil well leaks and explosions, global warming. Those aren't any ordinary cosmic rays, they are Mongo Rays! Lord Ming has it in for us. Where is Flash and Dr. Zarkov when we need them?
and what if you take a balloon fill it 80% with water the rest with oil shake it up and then prick the bottom
does the mixed liquid go straight out or does it go out in a cone shape and paint the floor.
perhaps this is what they are detecting OR something is absorbing cosmic rays at this other side of the universe.....a hole perhaps we collided and tore a hole there
i dunno im tired my physics brain is not in.....and Slashdot dont allow me to post enough cause of the mod nazis
Ice Cube would bust a cap in your ass for being a faggot.
Look around you.
Look... around you.
Look... around you. ...
How DO scientists sift through this data? They insert the assembled facts into a wave function graphing device.
Note that down in your copybook.
The device is powered by 2 icktoms of intelligent calcium and a green anole.
(addressing anole, paper lab jacket is visibly taped to the lizard's back) Hello, Professor!
When the functions display a wave on the screen of the osomoscope, the scientists interpret the signal. How do the scientists interpret it?
We may never know. Scientists have very intelligent brains, and it can be quite a challenge to even guess what they want for lunch. ... ...back next time when we learn about wood.
"We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all." - Douglas Adams
I mean, it is what protects us from vasts amounts of cosmic rays, and we know that our magnetic field isn't perfectly symmetrical ... maybe those differences account for a vast majority of this patterns? And the various celestial bodies that surround us (constantly deflecting this rays) account for the rest?
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
We need to send a search party to the northern hemisphere as quickly as possible!
We call this the "Microwave oven theory". Some areas get cooked to carbon, others are left frozen solid.
"Who modded this informative? Whoever it is must've been smokin' some of that martian pot!"
I have hear in good faith from a one William Dyer, noted geologist, that there are certain elder things once lived in the area of towering Antarctic mountains. According to his testimony, he surmised that in their early history, they made extensive use of an ability to travel through and beyond the earth's atmospheric bounds. Clearly, these cosmic rays are the residuals of their transplanetary locomotion and indeed proof of their existence! I now look forward to when science is able to prove the existence of fabled city, R'lyeh.
Doesn't even contain a link to the project in question.
The article alludes to the Earth's magnetic field but doesn't rule out its possible effects. I wonder if a comparison to a map of the Aurora Borealis might provoke further discussion.
It is because the Big Bang was not uniform. The slightest variation became exponentially magnified in the direction that had the advantage.
Look Around You.
Look. Around. You.
Have you guessed what we're looking for, yet? Yes, that's right - it's computer programming.
[ MAN SITTING AT TYPEWRITER ]
This man is writing a computer programme. A computer programme is like a script that tells a computer what to do. Like people, computers understand different languages - some examples of computer languages are:
* C
* PASCAL
* BASIC
* C double-plus
* C triple-plus
* C detuned bassoon
* Norwegian
Your school computer is probably a BBC Microcomputerisation Engine and, therefore, understands a dialect of BASIC known as 'HyperFrench.'
Make a note of this in your copybook... now.
Beware the cosmic rays as they signal the coming of the herald of Galactus. Where's Dr. Richards?
The particles in question pass through a kilometer of solid ice, they are going so fast they wouldnt even notice the earths magnetic field.
Except that the detector is for detecting neutrinos. They have no charge. Not only that but they are not expected to interact with the earth's magnetic fields according to the current theory. If only there were some sort of "article" that might have this kind of information in a form that is easy to "read" with a convenient "hyper-link" to lead us to it.
Sheesh... if only we had some sort of "moderators" who might understand this. "interesting" my ass.
Funny or not, why would that be a troll?
That linked Slashdot article is June 24, 2010. Today is July 31. That's 37 days ago.
It will reveal an image.
Clearly that part of the sky is where the aliens are.
Time for the seti guys to try to break the compression algorithm - so that we can get communicating.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
Its something to do with the second stargate, or the other ancient base in antarctica..
Maybe what they're measuring is coming from Earth's core..
(No, I didn't RTFA)
It's one of those 'hmm' deals..
...also, it scares me when scientists get visibly excited over the possibility of a 'smoking gun'.
Self-serving science is bad karma
While it's true that IceCube is designed to be a neutrino telescope, the observations here involve more common and easier to detect cosmic rays (e.g. gamma rays), coming from the southern half of the sky.
See, when IceCube is looking for neutrinos, they look for signals coming from beneath the northern part of the sky. They are essentially using the entire planet earth as a filter for cosmic rays since they can't pass through that much solid material, while neutrinos can with ease. Neutrinos don't interact electromagnetically at all, so to them "solid" matter is mostly empty space. Which includes the detector itself, which is why it's so important to filter out sources of noise.
They can tell what direction something is coming from (see the map), so if it came from the sky, it's probably not a neutrino but some other cosmic ray. And it looks like they were looking at all the data they would be subtracting out from their data sets when looking for neutrinos, and found something interesting about the distribution.
But as the article itself says, our magnetic field could in fact be the cause of this observed feature, since the rays in question are electromagnetic in nature. But I like the supernova theory, because it involves gigantic explosions. :)
The enemies of Democracy are
ha ha
I looked at the image and the cosmic rays seem to be lacking only in a small area of the whole measurement. Maybe somebody in a galaxy far far away is blocking the cosmic rays en masse with a bunch of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere (as in colonization of one or multiple galaxies).
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
My man Ice Cube was into observing subatomic particles.
cat
... penguin poop on the sensor.
Have gnu, will travel.
While I instantly recognize this from late night channel-flipping, and realize it couldn't possibly be more off topic, I must ask... what is origin of this nonsense?
This is what you get when you build a brand new IceCube system and don't tell about the little red button down there..
Oh. Well, if it's according to current theory, that's OK then.
For 30 some years of my life, I was told (by current theory) they were massless. Matter of fact, current theory still doesn't have a good number for neutrino mass.
While the Standard Model might have a lot in the way of predictive power, it doesn't have a lot in the way of explanatory power. How about you just add this uneven distribution factoid to the list of things you can't explain and get back to us when you have a theory that works from first principles.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I love you!
Google tells me it's a BBC comedy spoof of educational films called... Look Around You
Why can't we let people believe whatever they like? It's not like a little religion has ever hurt anyone.
As far as I can tell from reading the article, this proves that cosmic rays distribution does not follow a truly random pattern as they hit earth. Given that these rays originate from stars/nova/events and these events are not randomly distributed in the universe, why is this a surprise? I can only guess someone has theorised that if the universe is infinitely big, then the cosmic ray distribution should tend towards perfect (infinite) randomness. Can anyone shed light on the theory that this finding is diproving? links? This could also prove that the earth is travelling fast through rays, so it impacts more in the direction it moves, presumably the scientists have allowed for this too....
Waiting for the other shoe to...
We have seen toast, trees, bees nests, it stands to reason that this could be the Face of God, or a Dan Brown Novel promotional hoax....
Waiting for the other shoe to...
Maybe the doctor got something wrong with the Pandorica
rewriting history since 2109
It's just a spaceships' (probably a Bussard Ramjet's) exhaust.
Hmmm ... for 30 years of MY life, it's been "unknown whether they were massless or not, but if they have mass, then it is less than [insert small fraction] of the mass of an electron".
Sounds like the folks you were listening to were performing some hidden rounding-down ....
and it's all on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=look+around+you
I love Look Around You. It's a nonsense-filled educational program spoof about science. Cartoon Network showed the second season in their Adult Swim lineup a couple years ago. The first and second seasons have different formats and intros and music, and the "next episode" bits allude to shows that don't exist. Series 1 episodes are shorter and more abstract "in the classroom" type videos. Series 2 are longer format documentaries with recurring reporters and subjects and running gags (like the goofy giant vault doors).
Spoilers: my favorite bits are Maths (season 1), Music (season 2, with the Little Mouse music video), Health (season 2, fairly horrifying) and Computer Games (season 2) with the worlds smartest computer which they challenge to escape from a cage and then find that at the end it has replaced itself with a paper mache decoy.
Thanks ants. Thants.
I don't understand mods here sometimes...
The idea of tracing lines in space is what got my attention as well. It's as if previous posters have forgotten that Euclidean geometry breaks down when you start talking about the universe.
Not necessarily; he could be a dwarf.
It would be spooky if the region of space with fewer cosmic rays coincided with the WMAP cold spot.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
You though Health was horrifying? Two words: Helvetica. Scenario.
Most cosmic rays are low energy and don't make it all the way down to us, let alone sub-surface. The higher you go, the more you get.
Cosmic rays are charged so can be guided by magnetic fields, such as the heliosphere current sheet which itself isn't uniform.
In fact, it would be odd if the densities were uniform.
I expect they will find a Transformer there soon enough. I just hope it is an Autobot.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
I'll say it's a fair mod, and it was me that was modded troll. It's my bad luck to get a moderator who's got a poor sense of humor and also knows his stuff. I was going for funny, but the line between funny and troll is rather thin. Those darned astrophysicists are so darned literal, I should have expected it being as how this is slashdot and all.
I've complained about the moderation here before and there's a time for that, but this isn't one of those times.
Moderators: think a few times about the context before you call this post off topic, because it provides new information and does go to the point of this particular article, even if it appears on its face to be a side discussion. It's just subtle. We like subtlety, right?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Obvious no one has noticed that when the pattern of neutrinos, when analyzed, seems to spell out the words:
GALACTUS IS COMING