• Gamma-Ray Burst Zips Past Earth.
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[TABLE="class: outer_border, width: 800, align: left"] [TR] [TD] [TABLE="width: 640, align: center"] [TR] [TD][h2]HEADING[/h2][B]In 2011, a months-long blast of energy launched by an enormous black hole almost 11 billion years ago swept past Earth. Using a combination of data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), the world's largest radio telescope, astronomers have zeroed in on the source of this ancient outburst.[/B][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][QUOTE][IMG]http://images.sciencedaily.com/2013/01/130107175006.jpg[/IMG] ============================================================ Prior to its strong outbursts in 2011, blazar 4C +71.07 was a weak source for Fermi’s LAT. These images centered on 4C +71.07 show the rate at which the LAT detected gamma rays with energies above 100 million electron volts; lighter colors equal higher rates. The image at left covers 2.5 years, from the start of Fermi’s mission to 2011. The image at right shows 10 weeks of activity in late 2011, when 4C +71.07 produced its strongest outburst. A more frequently active blazar, S5 0716+71, appears in both images. (Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration)[/QUOTE][/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] [/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD] [TABLE="width: 500, align: center"] [TR] [TD]Theorists expect gamma-ray outbursts occur only in close proximity to a galaxy's central black hole, the powerhouse ultimately responsible for the activity. A few rare observations suggested this is not the case. The 2011 flares from a galaxy known as 4C +71.07 now give astronomers the clearest and most distant evidence that the theory still needs some work. The gamma-ray emission originated about 70 light-years away from the galaxy's central black hole. The 4C +71.07 galaxy was discovered as a source of strong radio emission in the 1960s. NASA's Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory, which operated in the 1990s, detected high-energy flares, but the galaxy was quiet during Fermi's first two and a half years in orbit. In early November 2011, at the height of the outburst, the galaxy was more than 10,000 times brighter than the combined luminosity of all of the stars in our Milky Way galaxy. "This renewed activity came after a long slumber, and that's important because it allows us to explicitly link the gamma-ray flares to the rising emission observed by radio telescopes," said David Thompson, a Fermi deputy project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Located in the constellation Ursa Major, 4C +71.07 is so far away that its light takes 10.6 billion years to reach Earth. Astronomers are seeing this galaxy as it existed when the universe was less than one-fourth of its present age. At the galaxy's core lies a supersized black hole weighing 2.6 billion times the sun's mass. Some of the matter falling toward the black hole becomes accelerated outward at almost the speed of light, creating dual particle jets blasting in opposite directions. One jet happens to point almost directly toward Earth. This characteristic makes 4C +71.07 a blazar, a classification that includes some of the brightest gamma-ray sources in the sky. Boston University astronomers Alan Marscher and Svetlana Jorstad routinely monitor 4C +71.07 along with dozens of other blazars using several facilities, including the VLBA. The instrument's 10 radio telescopes span North America, from Hawaii to St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and possess the resolving power of a single radio dish more than 5,300 miles across when their signals are combined. As a result, The VLBA resolves detail about a million times smaller than Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) and 1,000 times smaller than NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. In autumn 2011, the VLBA images revealed a bright knot that appeared to move outward at a speed 20 times faster than light. "Although this apparent speed was an illusion caused by actual motion almost directly toward us at 99.87 percent the speed of light, this knot was the key to determining the location where the gamma-rays were produced in the black hole's jet," said Marscher, who presented the findings Monday at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach, Calif. The knot passed through a bright stationary feature of the jet, which the astronomers refer to as its radio "core," on April 9, 2011. This occurred within days of Fermi's detection of renewed gamma-ray flaring in the blazar. Marscher and Jorstad noted that the blazar brightened at visible wavelengths in step with the higher-energy emission. During the most intense period of flaring, from October 2011 to January 2012, the scientists found the polarization direction of the blazar's visible light rotated in the same manner as radio emissions from the knot. They concluded the knot was responsible for the visible and the gamma-ray light, which varied in sync. This association allowed the researchers to pinpoint the location of the gamma-ray outburst to about 70 light-years from the black hole. The astronomers think that the gamma rays were produced when electrons moving near the speed of light within the jet collided with visible and infrared light originating outside of the jet. Such a collision can kick the light up to much higher energies, a process known as inverse-Compton scattering. The source of the lower-energy light is unclear at the moment. The researchers speculate the source may be an outer, slow-moving sheath that surrounds the jet. Nicholas MacDonald, a graduate student at Boston University, is investigating how the gamma-ray brightness should change in this scenario to compare with observations. "The VLBA is the only instrument that can bring us images from so near the edge of a young supermassive black hole, and Fermi's LAT is the only instrument that can see the highest-energy light from the galaxy's jet," said Jorstad. NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership. Fermi is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. It was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the United States. The VLBA is operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. For images related to this finding and to learn more about Fermi, visit: [url]http://go.nasa.gov/TGwz3N[/url] [/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] [/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][B]SOURCE: [/B] [URL]http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130107175006.htm[/URL][/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE]
[IMG]http://moviecultists.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Hulk-Smash-in-The-Avengers.jpg[/IMG]
This is why we should live underwater people. It's the perfect radiation shield.
Fuck me that was a close one. I've heard about what GRBs could do to Earth, and they ain't pretty. Also, d'you think there's any force in the universe that could destroy a black hole? Maybe antimatter could get sucked in and vaporize some of it's mass?
[QUOTE=ironman17;39136387]Fuck me that was a close one. I've heard about what GRBs could do to Earth, and they ain't pretty. Also, d'you think there's any force in the universe that could destroy a black hole? Maybe antimatter could get sucked in and vaporize some of it's mass?[/QUOTE] Well Hawking radiation causes them to evaporate so maybe creating negative energy densities near the event horizon could - Oh fuck it Paging Dr. JohnnyMo...
Darn, I missed.
There's an ejaculation joke in here somewhere.
I take it this was the one that was supposed to "kill" us all on 21st, I mean people make mistakes :v:
[QUOTE=EzioAuditore;39136318][IMG]http://moviecultists.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Hulk-Smash-in-The-Avengers.jpg[/IMG][/QUOTE] Hulk farted again
So we nearly all died then? Jesus that's close.
Its kind of scary. Everyone on this planet could be gone in a blink of an instant and it wouldnt make a difference. You would never wake up to the smell of bacon ever again. Let that sit for a while.
[QUOTE=ironman17;39136387]Fuck me that was a close one. I've heard about what GRBs could do to Earth, and they ain't pretty. Also, d'you think there's any force in the universe that could destroy a black hole? Maybe antimatter could get sucked in and vaporize some of it's mass?[/QUOTE] Antimatter grows a black hole in the exact same way matter does. [QUOTE=Eudoxia;39136419]Well Hawking radiation causes them to evaporate so maybe creating negative energy densities near the event horizon could - Oh fuck it Paging Dr. JohnnyMo...[/QUOTE] Yes, negative energy will shrink a black hole. Now as for how we could use that fact to actually shrink a black hole out of existence manually, I dunno.
[QUOTE=Eudoxia;39136380]This is why we should live underwater people. It's the perfect radiation shield.[/QUOTE] I heard that gamma ray bursts from black holes would completely destroy a planet, I'm pretty sure being under water wouldn't help us.
[QUOTE=Eudoxia;39136380]This is why we should live underwater people. It's the perfect radiation shield.[/QUOTE] Earth already has a radiation shield it does a good job
I remember reading alternatives to how Romulus could have been destroyed in star trek 11 to make it more realistic and this was one of them.
Am I blind or does it not say how close it was to hitting us
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;39138209]Antimatter grows a black hole in the exact same way matter does. Yes, negative energy will shrink a black hole. Now as for how we could use that fact to actually shrink a black hole out of existence manually, I dunno.[/QUOTE] What happens when the antimatter reaches the matter at the centre (assuming they'd actually touch)? Wouldn't they annihilate eachother? Kugelblitz (assuming they can exist)? [editline]8th January 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=SpaceGhost;39138777]I heard that gamma ray bursts from black holes would completely destroy a planet, I'm pretty sure being under water wouldn't help us.[/QUOTE] Depends on distance really. Might hit us and we wouldn't even notice it due to it having started so far away. Or we all die without warning.
[QUOTE=DeEz;39140323]Am I blind or does it not say how close it was to hitting us[/QUOTE] Fermi orbits at 550km, but even then it was also detected by ground based observatories, so part of it did hit us. That said, it's so far away that I doubt it'd actually have any effect on the Earth.
[QUOTE=HoodedSniper;39137815]Its kind of scary. Everyone on this planet could be gone in a blink of an instant and it wouldnt make a difference. You would never wake up to the smell of bacon ever again. Let that sit for a while.[/QUOTE] Reminds me of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
One hypothesis about life being so rare in the universe is that these gamma ray bursts constantly cook and sterilize every planet and world, wiping out any signs of life and/or making it uninhabitable, and that we've just been incredibly lucky to have never been hit by one of these bursts.
[QUOTE=V12US;39141156]One hypothesis about life being so rare in the universe is that these gamma ray bursts constantly cook and sterilize every planet and world, wiping out any signs of life and/or making it uninhabitable, and that we've just been incredibly lucky to have never been hit by one of these bursts.[/QUOTE] So you're saying Gamma-ray bursts are actually HALO rings going off to combat the flood?
[QUOTE=acds;39140390]What happens when the antimatter reaches the matter at the centre (assuming they'd actually touch)? Wouldn't they annihilate eachother? Kugelblitz (assuming they can exist)? [editline]8th January 2013[/editline] Depends on distance really. Might hit us and we wouldn't even notice it due to it having started so far away. Or we all die without warning.[/QUOTE] Antimatter and Matter destroy each other on a particle basis. Even if it worked that way, we'd need enough antimatter equivalent to the mass of the black hole. [editline]8th January 2013[/editline] Correct me if I'm wrong
[QUOTE=Milkdairy;39141415]Antimatter and Matter destroy each other on a particle basis. Even if it worked that way, we'd need enough antimatter equivalent to the mass of the black hole. [editline]8th January 2013[/editline] Correct me if I'm wrong[/QUOTE] Quite sure you're completely correct. Not saying it would be feasible for us (well not in the near future anyway) to dump that much antimatter into a black hole, just wondering what would happen. Though there is the theory that a dense enough energy concentration could create a black hole, so maybe not much would change.
Omega missed his target to transport the Doctor.
It wasn't any danger to us. Radio waves don't destroy worlds.
[QUOTE=Falubii;39147270]It wasn't any danger to us. Radio waves don't destroy worlds.[/QUOTE] No, but GAMMA rays will.
[QUOTE=Falubii;39147270]It wasn't any danger to us. Radio waves don't destroy worlds.[/QUOTE] If I recall correctly, isn't the whole reason that this was a big deal is because gamma ray bursts can rid a planet of life?
[QUOTE=ironman17;39136387]Fuck me that was a close one. I've heard about what GRBs could do to Earth, and they ain't pretty. Also, d'you think there's any force in the universe that could destroy a black hole? Maybe antimatter could get sucked in and vaporize some of it's mass?[/QUOTE] antimatter would make the black hole larger. It's still made up of the same stuff as regular matter. Even if that weren't the case, the destroyed particles would have nowhere to go but inward. spinning it rapidly enough could in theory fling it apart, but it would have to be rotating at a speed well beyond the speed of light, and I don't want to find out what happens when you throw little bits of black hole across the universe. Hawking radiation is the only theorized way to actually destroy a black hole, but the only things capable of controlling it are black holes themselves.
[QUOTE=Tom32123;39147323]If I recall correctly, isn't the whole reason that this was a big deal is because gamma ray bursts can rid a planet of life?[/QUOTE] Only if they're very close to the planet, the bursts we see are far enough away to be useful for study.
[QUOTE=Tom32123;39147323]If I recall correctly, isn't the whole reason that this was a big deal is because gamma ray bursts can rid a planet of life?[/QUOTE] It's 11 billion lightyears away. [del]It's been red shifted into radio waves. It even says in the article it was detected using radio telescopes.[/del] Edit: That part was wrong. They only used the radio telescopes to locate where the gamma ray burst originated in the galaxy. I don't know why I thought gamma rays could be red shifted down to radio waves. It still isn't dangerous though. At 11 billion lightyears it can't do anything.
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