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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?
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
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!"
Doesn't even contain a link to the project in question.
> I mean, it is what protects us from vasts amounts of cosmic rays...
No it isn't. The Earth's magnetic field has negligible effect on cosmic rays: they are far to energetic for it to influence them significantly. What protects us from cosmic rays is the atmosphere.
> ...maybe those differences account for a vast majority of this patterns?
The physicists will have already taken the small (but known) effect of the magnetic field into account.
> And the various celestial bodies that surround us (constantly deflecting
> this rays) account for the rest?
Celestial bodies do not surround us. The sun and the moon together cover less than 1/100,000th of the sky.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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.
The Earth's magnetic field is well mapped. The physicists will already have taken it into consideration.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
It makes me sad that you had to explain that here.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
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.
That linked Slashdot article is June 24, 2010. Today is July 31. That's 37 days ago.
I'm happy that it was phrased in the form of a question. Too often, the reaction to a bit of science that somebody doesn't wish to believe is simply rejection of it, perhaps combined with unsourced assertions (or assertions to un-peer-reviewed sources).
You don't have to know everything in science. There's too much to know. Ignorance is fine, as long as you're (a) aware of it, (b) curious, and (c) not going to fight against those who do know it.
R'lyeh is in the south pacific. Pnakoticos is in the Australian desert. Irem is in Saudia Arabia. Unfortunately, the Pentagonally Symmetrical Elder Things named their last surface city 'Can'ned'spham', which is why the Shoggoths ate them.
Who is John Cabal?
The Earth's magnetic field has negligible effect on cosmic rays: they are far to energetic for it to influence them significantly.
I wonder why the researcher on the project doesn't rule out the magnetic field.
FTA: whether it's due to the magnetic field surrounding us or to the effect of a nearby supernova remnant, we don't know.
It will reveal an image.
There is a link between solar activity and cosmic rays and of course there is the interaction of the solar wind and our magnetic field, so in theory there is a pathway between cosmic rays and the Earth's magnetic field.
> FTA: whether it's due to the magnetic field surrounding us or to the effect
> of a nearby supernova remnant, we don't know.
The cosmic rays will have travelled a long ways through interstellar space permeated by magnetic fields that, unlike that of the Earth, we don't have detailed maps of.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Excellent point.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
From your own source:
So your statement that "[the Earth's magnetic field] is what protects us from vasts amounts of cosmic rays" is wrong. Sorry.
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
No it isn't. The Earth's magnetic field has negligible effect on cosmic rays: they are far to energetic for it to influence them significantly. What protects us from cosmic rays is the atmosphere.
This is incorrect. The International Space Station has a significantly lower cosmic radiation environment due to the Earth's magnetic field. However, the cosmic rays that are energetic enough to be detected under a few hundred meters of ice can easily punch through the Earth's magnetic field.
Celestial bodies do not surround us. The sun and the moon together cover less than 1/100,000th of the sky.
Indeed. The heliosphere might, due to its vast size (and its shock interaction with the galactic medium is apparently a known source of cosmic rays), be an intermediate filter with enough pull to distort the path of incoming cosmic rays.
Celestial bodies do not surround us. The sun and the moon together cover less than 1/100,000th of the sky.
Really? so you are saying the universe is flat, and the earth is off in a corner where nothing but the sun and moon are around it?
Seems to me, that the universe is in at least 3 Dimensions, and no matter which direction we go, we are going to hit some "celestial" body.
And considering Celestial bodies means naturally occurring physical entities, associations or structures that current science has demonstrated to exist in outer space, but not including earth, seems that maybe your a bit wrong on your last part there.
Be seeing you...
> Seems to me, that the universe is in at least 3 Dimensions, and no matter
> which direction we go, we are going to hit some "celestial" body.
Since all but a negligible fraction of all the celestial bodies in the universe are stars that would mean that the entire sky would glow at the surface temperature of the average star since no matter where you looked you would be looking directly at the surface of a star.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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
The Earth's magnetic field shields it from solar "cosmic" rays and probably some secondary galactic ones. The primaries, however, are so energetic that they are merely deflected a bit. What does stop a lot of primaries is the field embedded in the solar wind. Since the heliosphere is asymmetric and poorly mapped this may very well account for the observed asymmetry. I concede that the Earth's field may have more than negligible effect, but I still think that the researchers will have accounted for it.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
My man Ice Cube was into observing subatomic particles.
cat
... penguin poop on the sensor.
Have gnu, will travel.
The sun and the moon together cover less than 1/100,000th of the sky.
Really? so you are saying the universe is flat, and the earth is off in a corner where nothing but the sun and moon are around it?
Is the sky flat where you live?
"and no matter which direction we go, we are going to hit some "celestial" body."
Nope, space is pretty much just space. Galaxies commonly collide with each other but the stars within those collisions very rarely smash into each other. It's not that there is any shortage of celestial bodies it's just that space is really, really, big.
There's also the fact that ALL of the celestial bodies are contained within the microwave background, so why is it that we can see the microwave background if every direction is obscured with a celestial body?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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
What isn't well mapped is the galactic magnetic field.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
You have rediscovered Olber's Paradox.
After all, I am strangely colored.
You must be new around these parts. Despite Slashdot's self image as a haven of the extremely smart and well educated... it's really not much better than any other random collection of people. A few at one end of the bell curve, a few at the other, and the bulk huddled comfortably under the hump in the middle. Only nowadays, with education (both formal and self) being rare - what's under the hump isn't all that remarkable.
Somehow there has arisen here the belief that being a techie or a soi-disant geek/nerd means you're automagically above average intelligence and thus smarter than the general run of the populace. (Though how knowing all the characters and plotlines of all the 'right' and most popular anime make you 'smarter' than the guy who knows all the stats for all the major Red Sox players for the last fifty years escapes me - but that's what is commonly believed here.) They don't recognize the existence of a difference between being smart and being educated - and being wise enough to know what you don't know.
Be thankful it was posed in the form of a question though. Because the corollary to that self image is the steadfast belief that any random Slashdotter knows more about the topic than experts on the topic - no matter what the topic. All manner of arrant nonsense, urban legends, and utter bilge gets moderated up because the moderators (drawn from the same pool as the posters) hold the same self image and thus hold the corollary as well.
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.
... that should, of course, be "the _less_ solar activity, the more cosmic rays"
This is one of the good-fit hypothesises with regards to so-called "global warming". Less active sun = more cosmic rays = more clouds = less heat.
The warming would then come from the combined effects of the solar cycles in the latter part of the 20th century which were the strongest in recorded history. The difference from currently debunked solar theories is that it's not the TSI (visible solar output) that effects the climate, but the strength of the cosmic ray deflection.
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.
Why, because you assume every single person on this site is an expert on the subject of cosmic rays?
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.
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.
Or standing on his head. Or he could be a giant.
Or he could be completely normal except for his huge cock.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
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.
R'lyeh is in the south pacific. Pnakoticos is in the Australian desert. Irem is in Saudia Arabia. Unfortunately, the Pentagonally Symmetrical Elder Things named their last surface city 'Can'ned'spham', which is why the Shoggoths ate them.
It just makes my day that this is modded Score: 5, Informative!
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates