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NASA's Fermi Satellite Maps Entire Sky, Finds Mysterious Unknown Object

Posted by timothy on from the best-kind-of-unknown-object dept.

StartsWithABang writes: With the launch of the Fermi satellite in the late 2000s, we began observing the highest energy photons in the Universe — gamma rays — all over the sky, to unprecedented precision. Produced from cosmic ray showers in space when high energy protons run into other, stationary protons, these gamma rays locate point sources from supermassive black holes to supernova remnants to pulsars. There is, additionally, a great correlation between the infrared sky and the gamma ray sky, since the great high-energy background scatters off of the diffuse infrared gas, producing gamma rays there as well. But while a great many sources can be correlated with known structures, Fermi reveals at least one unknown, intense behemoth that emits spectacularly in gamma rays.

32 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. It's God. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    It's just God.

    1. Re:It's God. by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 4, Funny

      "It's just God."

      And because he knows when you're using an ad blocker, He won't let you read the article.

    2. Re:It's God. by QuantumLeaper · · Score: 2

      You should be happy, there "Lite ads" only were 48 ads on the page, I guess that 'Lite' for them.

    3. Re:It's God. by grep+-v+'.*'+* · · Score: 2

      "It's just God."

      And because he knows when you're using an ad blocker, He won't let you read the article.

      No, God knows everything but then doesn't do anything about it. Only Santa Claus takes action if "he knows if you've been bad or good" -- like using an ad blocker.

      I'm unclear in this case which state Santa would deem that you're in, though. Maybe we need Schrodinger Claus to determine that: instead of presents or coal, he comes with a bag of dead cats or live kittens and lets you decide which one to take. (Kind of like a lottery draw with fur. And yet more claws.)

      --
      If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
    4. Re:It's God. by ClickOnThis · · Score: 3, Funny

      This just in: they've decoded the gamma rays signal, and it said "don't masturbate".

      Really?

      I would have guessed either "drink more ovaltine" or "never gonna give you up."

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  2. FORBES!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That site is completely out of control with trackers and third-party Javascript.

    If I was in their web department I would do the honourable thing and commit seppuku.

    1. Re:FORBES!!!! by gtall · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Hehehe....NoScript showed a black page, it caused my browser to load nothing. Then I checked the url, Forbes. End-O-Session, nope, do not want, the Forbes site is the Breath of Satan.

    2. Re:FORBES!!!! by weedjams · · Score: 3, Insightful

      no kidding! flash control, ad block plus, NoScript, ghostery and privacy badger all lit up...can not get past landing.

    3. Re:FORBES!!!! by coastwalker · · Score: 2

      Forbes is a blank to me also. However you could read this http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_...

      --
      Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
  3. fucking forbes by czert · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Um. Does anyone have a non-forbes link?

    1. Re:fucking forbes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2016/01/08/the-first-all-sky-extreme-energy-map-reveals-an-unknown-monster-in-our-galaxy-synopsis/

      Fuck forbes.

    2. Re:fucking forbes by hduff · · Score: 3, Informative

      Even that story links to Forbes for the "Answer".

      --
      "I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
    3. Re:fucking forbes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Or to be slightly less of an ass:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_Gamma-ray_Space_Telescope

      http://www.universetoday.com/19879/fermi-telescope-makes-first-big-discovery-gamma-ray-pulsar/
      (This one comes with a movie!)

      http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/gr_pulsar.html

      https://www.sciencemag.org/content/325/5942/840
      (This one is an actual paper!)

  4. Ad blocker? by CyberPhart · · Score: 2

    Forbes won't allow me onto their site unless I turn off my ad blocker. Eat shit Forbes. Your rag of a magazine isn't worth being forced to look at your pop-ups.

  5. Click by 110010001000 · · Score: 2

    Click to find out what happens next! http://scienceblogs.com/starts...

    1. Re:Click by hduff · · Score: 2

      Click to find out what happens next!

      http://scienceblogs.com/starts...

      Even that story links to Forbes for the "Answer".

      --
      "I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
    2. Re:Click by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Informative

      Click to find out what happens next!

      Or better yet, don't click at all, and let this idiot who's using Slashdot as his personal advertising platform for every single one of his blogposts disappear into obscurity.

  6. Blocked Because I'm Using AdBlock? by hduff · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Slashdot should not be accepting stories with links that refuse to work with AdBlock enabled.

    --
    "I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
    1. Re:Blocked Because I'm Using AdBlock? by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Informative

      Slashdot should not be accepting stories from some blogger who decides to simply re-link every single one of his articles for free Slashvertising without every contributing to the site, period. The shittyness of the resulting site not withstanding.

      Startswithabang has a post count of 1 and a submission count of 119.

    2. Re:Blocked Because I'm Using AdBlock? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Forbes asked readers to turn off ad blockers then immediately served them pop-under malware.

      http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/08/you-say-advertising-i-say-block-that-malware/

  7. News stories with Forbes links are useless. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    News stories with Forbes links are useless. You can't read them, and nobody's going to turn off their malware/ad blockers for them. At this time, Forbes is always a case of wait-until-someone-finds-another-link and check the comments for said link.

  8. Submitter and Forbes Relationship? by hduff · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There seems to be some relationship between StartsWithABang and Forbes. All the submissions are to Forbes links.

    StartsWithABang appears to be a shill and needs to be banned.

    --
    "I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
    1. Re:Submitter and Forbes Relationship? by weedjams · · Score: 2

      2nd that. smacktardery is from 2008-2009 era

    2. Re:Submitter and Forbes Relationship? by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Informative

      Not at all. All of his submissions however are to his own blogs. EVERY SINGLE ONE. This dates back before Forbes when he was peddling his clickbate on Medium.

      He has made 1 post in the past year.
      He has had 119 stories on the front page.

      He's not a shill, he's just someone using Slashdot as his own personal advertising platform.

    3. Re:Submitter and Forbes Relationship? by 110010001000 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Slashdot is getting paid to accept these submissions (along with HughPickens, etc). They arent getting on the front page via firehose/merit.

  9. Or, just go to the source . . . by Shane+McEwan · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://www.nasa.gov/content/fermi-gamma-ray-space-telescope

  10. Non-Forbes link (Nasa.gov) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasas-fermi-space-telescope-sharpens-its-high-energy-vision

  11. Actually they're decelerating towards us by wisebabo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The aliens have their drive unit pointed at us as they want to decelerate into our solar system and not fly right through it. Their drive emissions are tremendously blue shifted (into the gamma rays) since they are approaching at a fair percentage of the speed of light (and maybe the drive is outputting gamma rays to begin with).

    The best way to verify this would be to look at the spectra of the gamma ray emissions and see if they are gradually being redshifted (slowing down). This would give us an idea of how fast they are decelerating and maybe when they will be arriving. Let's hope that their ship isn't really huge or that it's not pointed directly at us so that their drive won't scour away our atmosphere!

    (They could also be using a huge solar sail and what we're seeing is the reflection of our own sun but they'd really have to be moving very very close to c in order for it to be reflected as gamma rays. In that case, since they would be traveling just behind the wavefront they would also have to be right on top of us!).

  12. As a General Policy, Any Links to Forbes by DesertNomad · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Should not be accepted by the editors, due to Forbes' ad-blocker policy.

  13. Gamma Burst Monitor Runs RTEMS open source RTOS by joelsherrill · · Score: 2

    I thought it would be of interest that at least the Gamma Burst Monitor on Fermi is running the open source RTEMS real-time operating system.
    There are multiple references but this is an easy to find one: http://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.0450... This paper details the hardware and some of the timing characteristics of the system. And it has some nice pictures. :)

  14. Forbes by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

    Hi again. Looks like you’re still using an ad blocker.

    Cheeky fuckers!

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  15. Stop Promoting Forbes on /. by Hylandr · · Score: 4, Informative

    Stop promoting Forbes on Slashdot please.

    Here's some alternative links:

    - http://www.redorbit.com/news/s...

    - http://motherboard.vice.com/en...

    - http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_...

    - http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_...

    --
    ~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.