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Hubble Spots Star Explosion Astronomers Can't Explain
schwit1 writes: The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted the explosion of a star that does not fit into any theory for stellar evolution. "The exploding star, which was seen in the constellation Eridanus, faded over two weeks — much too rapidly to qualify as a supernova. The outburst was also about ten times fainter than most supernovae, explosions that destroy some or all of a star. But it was about 100 times brighter than an ordinary nova, which is a type of surface explosion that leaves a star intact. 'The combination of properties is puzzling,' says Mario Livio, an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. 'I thought about a number of possibilities, but each of them fails' to account for all characteristics of the outburst, he adds." We can put this discovery on the bottom of a very long list of similar discoveries by Hubble, which this week is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its launch.
It just means there are more things in space that we don't fully understand yet. But every discovery adds knowledge so we can understand it better.
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In a galaxy far, far away, Princess Leia turned her head away while Darth Vader took out his anger at the old empire for taking away his hot grits.
Can't remember where I parked my star class death star..... Did I go on a bender last night.... time to lay off the sauce.
Just saying, maybe it's not a natural event.
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
A wizard did it.
My first thought was "death star".
Mine too. And from TFA:
The light that Hubble recorded from the newly found outburst left its distant home galaxy 7.8 billion years ago.
So it was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away
It's just the the Dark Star hippies blowing up unstable stars for fun & profit.
It's Praxis of course. Time to make a peace treaty?
The host galaxy is quite far from us. At these distances we can only rely on the red shift which I always thought not to be completely accurate.
So, if that galaxy is a little bit closer to us then there may not be any mystery here.
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
...came the Lexx, to our dark universe of evil and depravity, destroying the twin worlds of Fire and Water.
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
It is the remains of a star system whose inhabitants were unwilling to build laser cannons for The Monks (see "The Fourth Profession" by Larry Niven).
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
It's quite simple. First, the star underwent a small blast, too small to be detected, in which it expelled a layer of gas. That gas formed a cloud around the star. Then, there was an ordinary blast. What we saw was the gas cloud being illuminated by the ordinary blast.
The faint burst might be from the extra stellar activity from starlifitng all the material needed to make the dyson sphere.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Probably some long-forgotten interstellar war.
Nothing that exciting. Just a Vogon constructor fleet doing their job. They posted the notice. Nobody could be bothered to read it.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
A new type of star !
It was obviously an alien weapon and the government is trying to explain it away.
It must have been a champagne supernova in the sky.
Or to explain it with a car analogy: Chevy Nova.
The thing that struck me about those pics, was the distance the star moved from Jan 2014 to Aug 2014. It appeared to cover roughly 5-10% of the outer diameter of the host galaxy (although the star could be very well be deeper inside the galaxy). The Solar System takes about 226 million years to orbit the Milky Way. This thing appears to orbit at 13 years!
That makes me think their preliminary analysis of these being two separate events is correct. Although, I am not an astrophysicist, so what do I know?
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
Briefly.
No, it was the galactic equivalent of Eternal September. They just saying "hi" to the entire galaxy.
A big boom, but not quite big enough to destroy the star? Perhaps the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator just got misdirected to the wrong location?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
It's from a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Must be the Death Star blowing up Alderaan.