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Scientists May Have Detected Neutrinos From Another Galaxy

The Bad Astronomer writes "A experiment called IceCube — consisting of sensitive light detectors buried deep in the Antarctic ice — has detected two ultra-high-energy neutrinos, each with over a peta-electronVolt of energy (a quadrillion times the energy of a visible light photon), the highest energy neutrinos ever seen. The two events, nicknamed Bert and Ernie, have a 99% chance of originating outside our galaxy, likely created either by a supermassive black hole or an exploding gamma-ray burst."

11 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. Stargate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    It was obviously the explosion created from the enormous energy from a supergate in the galaxy Atlantis lives in.

    Those pesky Wraith, they got desperate. A little too desperate. They took out an entire arm.

    Such a shame, we'd never see such a thing possibly happen because the show was killed so early.
    Seeing such a catastrophic event happen would have been huge, it'd be a pretty huge step up from planets exploding to supernova consuming a planetary system to that. Wait, I forgot that weapon the Ancients created, the one that sucked energy out of our space time I believe, the one that absolutely wrecked an entire planetary system because it went out of control.
    The recession left behind such a huge wreck of an industry when it began. Things being cancelled left, right and center, horribly rating agencies delivering obviously skewed viewership numbers because they never calculated the difference between viewership groups. (you expect actual geeks to be out there announcing everything ever, compared to those who watch reality TV religiously? Hell no, not even remotely similar groups)
    And then of course, the geeks complain, "but if I let them spy on me the terrorists win." ...
    I would honestly love to see one country go "hey no taxes everyone", just to prove a point. People are stupid. I wish that supergate, that never exploded, exploded next to Earth.

    Well that sure was a tangent. Tune in next time to your regularly scheduled oddities on Slashdot. Same batshit-insane time, same batshit-insane website.

  2. IceCube? by excelsior_gr · · Score: 4, Funny

    WORD! That's a fly name for an experiment dawg!

    1. Re:IceCube? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yeah, Fuck the Pole-Ice!

  3. Re:in joules. please by P-niiice · · Score: 5, Funny

    are you not familiar with the upside the head measurement of force? measured in FredSanfords

  4. Re:in joules. please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    you big dummy.

  5. Re:in joules. please by macraig · · Score: 4, Funny

    Not only is he young, he doesn't know how to use the Internet to find out about this "obscure" Fred Sanford.

  6. Re:not so good with numbers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Note that this is different than an aunt-fucker, which is sort of like a cross-eyed mother fucker.

  7. Re:not so good with numbers... by rasmusbr · · Score: 3, Funny

    Mark your preferred definition of probability
    [ ] Bayesianism
    [ ] Frequentism
    [x] Ridiculous frequentism

  8. Re:not so good with numbers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    No, your wife being an aunt doesn't make you an aunt fucker. You would also need to fuck your wife.

  9. Re:Not your "everyday" Neutrino by edumacator · · Score: 3, Funny

    I have no idea what this means, but I will memorize it and use it at a party. I might not walk away with the ladies, but if people think I'm smarter than them after repeating this, then maybe the next time I say something stupid, they might just think it was over their heads.

  10. Re:in joules. please by femtobyte · · Score: 4, Funny

    Ah yes, please excuse me for not fitting in all the details of my result above. I'm really more an experimentalist than a theorist, so I didn't feel up to calculating the conversion from first principles. But I did have a bit of spare beam time on the schedule. Finding appropriate nano-horses was a bit tricky. My first attempt started with a pony (just a small horse to first order), but its energy output didn't scale very linearly when I chopped it into pieces. I finally ended up using fetal sea-horses for the comparison, though the first couple batches didn't fare well during pumpdown, and left a bit of a mess on the scintillator calorimeters. Anyway, I don't want to bore you with all the sticky details, which I've got to get back to scrubbing off the inside of our vacuum chamber.